


At First Sight

by Lyricality



Category: Transformers - All Media Types
Genre: Alternate Universe, Canon-Typical Violence, Complete, First Time, Love at First Sight, M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-06-23
Updated: 2014-01-13
Packaged: 2017-12-15 23:05:06
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 3
Words: 27,218
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/855026
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Lyricality/pseuds/Lyricality
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Optimus is the last of the Primes; Megatron is the greatest of Kaon's gladiatorial warriors.  Their shared destiny--Optimus is certain--just needs a push in the correct direction.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Part 1

**Author's Note:**

> I've been working on this for a ridiculously long time--something like three years, in fact, when Lady Oneiros first gave me the Megatron/Optimus prompt "Love at first sight."
> 
> Initially, this story was meant to take place in the Primeverse, but the background provided at the end of Season One has rendered it completely AU. There are elements of IDW's Megatron: Origin and Bayverse (particularly the notion of a Lord High Protector and the idea of Optimus as the last of the Primes) as well.

# At First Sight

## Part I

Architects had originally designed the central Pit of Kaon to hold twenty thousand observers. At this moment, well over thirty thousand mechs crowded its seats, overwhelmed its walkways, and crushed against each other in its balconies. Their voices rose together in an eerie, pounding refrain that shook ash from the support girders and vibrated through every tense strut of Optimus Prime's frame. His spark fluctuated, throbbed, and quickened until it synchronized with that incredible rhythm.

_MEGATRON_

_MEGATRON_

Mechs pushed against Optimus from all sides. They surged like a dark tide, drawn like magnets to a single pole, their attention focused as massive gears turned and the great doors began to grind apart. The sound of the crowd rose into a single, shattering outcry, and then the noise tapered off into disturbing silence as Kaon's champion stepped out of the shadows and onto the gladiatorial floor. Converted mining floodlights rendered Megatron into unforgiving angles. For an instant, Optimus struggled to recalibrate his optics. His first impression of the mech was nothing but powerful lines and massive shapes—perhaps carved from stone, perhaps rendered from steel.

The contrast of shadows eased when Megatron lifted his head. Red paint marked the vulnerable plating beneath his closed optics and scrolled across the armor of his chest. Beneath the veneer of fresh polish, Optimus saw deep scars.

Megatron lifted his distinctive helm in both hands and activated his optics. The crowd shouted in one incredible voice.

Optimus _stared,_ and the interior of his chest throbbed with a rhythmic ache that echoed the energy of the crowd.

_MEGATRON_

Not a cheer for a beloved performer. Not even a chant for a popular combatant. It was a battlecry for a hero.

Megatron bared dental plates filed to perfect points, but Optimus would not have termed the expression a smile. Around the unexpectedly refined construction of Megatron's head, four symmetrical fins gleamed with golden patterns of sensor relays, and they gave him the silhouette of an brutal warrior god. Those fins folded inward around his faceplates in the moment before Megatron donned his helm. Then he turned to face the opposite set of doors with the gaunt smile of an executioner.

Those doors groaned apart. Mechs around Optimus jostled against him and vied for a better place, a closer look, in this cheapest of viewing platforms in the Pit. If not for his unusual height—even under the constraints of a heavier alt mode as part of his disguise—Optimus would have seen precious little of the arena.

A chirp echoed through Optimus's internal comm lines. Through its link to his operating parameters, Teletraan had taken note of the quickening of his fuel cycles and the stress on his ventilation systems, and it had formulated a wordless but pointed inquiry as to his status.

Optimus divided his attention long enough to reply. _::Received. Status normal. Continue monitoring.::_ Teletraan double-chirped in affirmation, and Optimus focused again on the figure entering the arena.

Brutalion hulked out of the shadows to face Kaon's champion. He was half again as large as Megatron, and the weighty crunch of his steps made the floors vibrate and set the arena lights flickering.

Overhead, a voice in digital tri-harmony spoke the name of each challenger and their city of origin. It began a countdown from ten.

Arms unfolding into wedged blades with serrated edges, Brutalion flexed his armor and widened his stance. His heavily modified form revealed few indications of his original function; he might once have been a dockworker or a factory drone. When the Pit bosses had recreated him for battle, they had armored him past all recognition. Even his wide-set optics now glittered from behind overlapping plates of more than one material. Long spikes rose in bristling patterns from his shoulder plates, preventing an easy strike at the base of his neck cabling.

By contrast, Megatron's long frame looked spare, clean. His legs widened at the base to balance the weight of arms powerful enough to wield a grade Omega pickaxe. Four nanokliks on the clock, and he remained motionless except for the widening of his smile.

Two nanokliks.

And one.

The crowd roiled with a massive shout that struck against Optimus's audio receptors like a physical blow. Brutalion roared back at them, back at Megatron, before he charged. Megatron prepared himself with a backward step and a subtle rotation of the gears in his shoulders. He carried no weapon, integrated or otherwise—his reputation had solidified around the claim that he could deactivate his opponents with nothing but his own hands. True to form, he caught Brutalion's first strike against the side of one shoulder, and metal plating dented and sheered. The proximity allowed him to reach underneath Brutalion's guard, wrench a hand into the gap between hip spar and abdominal plating, and rip free long tangles of sparking wire.

Snarling, Brutalion tore away and stumbled backwards three steps. Mech fluid dripped along the angles of his hip and down one leg, and he bared his dental plates as Megatron discarded the wiring with a twist of one wrist.

They had taken the measure of each other, and they collided again with a screaming clatter of metal and the rising howl of the crowd. They exchanged blows that would have killed lesser mechs on contact, and Optimus knew now that no matter what the demure aristocrats of Iacon might like to say as reassurance to each other, these fights were not staged. This time, Megatron reeled back out of Brutalion's grasp, and one of his optics flickered with damage. A thin trail of energon wound downward from the edge of that optic and smeared the paint below it.

Brutalion wiped at his shattered jaw with the hilt of one blade. He said something that Optimus couldn't hear over the rumble of the crowd, but whatever it was, it made Megatron grin. Ribbons of energon gleamed on his dental plates.

With that grin still in place, Megatron took the offensive, striking forward with one fist, then feinting just outside the slash of Brutalion's left arm and its attached blade. He spun to kick, and Brutalion grunted at the impact. Two armor plates tore free of his lower chest and spun away into the crowd. With a snarl, Brutalion pivoted on one wheeled foot and used his greater reach to his advantage. Swinging both arms around, he caught Megatron across the back with both blades. Metal buckled and sparked. When Brutalion pulled away, a thin shadow of oil coated his arms, and energon spread from double slashes to trickle downward over Megatron's hip joints.

Optimus leaned forward and his ventilation systems hitched. Under no circumstances had he expected to see Megatron defeated.

Face plates transformed—turned primitive in rage—Megatron whirled on Brutalion and struck back with his fists. Reeling backwards, Brutalion nearly overbalanced into the crowd, and outcries of sudden panic and fierce glee muffled the sounds of battle for just a moment. Brutalion regained his center of balance, then took back the ground he had lost. He swung blindly, one optic broken, and Megatron bared those fangs and retreated one step, then another.

The floor was slippery with oil. Even Megatron's treaded feet lost traction and forced him to bend to lower his center of gravity. Brutalion sneered, lifted his right blade, and sliced it down toward the back of Megatron's neck.

Spark quickening, Optimus almost cried out. Megatron shifted and skidded just out of the way.

Then he slammed a hand down against the back of the blade, driving the point into the arena floor. Harnessing that momentum, Megatron launched himself over Brutalion's head, avoiding all those spiked points by bare microns. His hip joints revolved in a full semicircle.

The turn brought Megatron to the arena floor facing Brutalion's back, rather than facing away. Thwarted by his own downward momentum, Brutalion tried to recover—tried to turn—but Megatron turned with him, brought back one fist, and bared his fangs with feral triumph as he drove a hand inward and upward through the thinner plates over Brutalion's spinal struts. Even above the roar of the crowd, Optimus heard the _crack_ of one of those struts, then another.

Gradually, the crowd quieted. Another _crack_ splintered through the arena.

Brutalion struggled, but Megatron had one arm locked around his chest, preventing him from raising his blades, and Megatron's other arm buried itself deeper and deeper in Brutalion's chassis. Heaving, desperate, the challenger struck out with his swords, and both blades dug into the ragged metal of the arena floor with groaning force. Bracing his weight, Megatron shoved his fist deeper yet, and Optimus could see the cables knotting with the force of his grip. Brutalion screamed, a long wail, and then his remaining optic flickered as his voice rasped into hoarse static.

“'Til all are one,” a mech beside Optimus intoned. He was not the only one—dozens of mechs around them picked up the refrain, as Megatron tightened his grip yet again. Brutalion's optic went dark; he went silent. Megatron extracted his hand.

Energon spilled across the floor. Oil spattered over the crowds of mechs closest to the carnage; Optimus flinched when drops of it struck his antennae. The wrecked hulk that had once been Brutalion collapsed to the floor, and Megatron stood above him with both hands fisted and dripping with vital fluids. The voice of the crowd became a rhythm more powerful than any music Optimus had ever heard.

_'Til all are one_

Megatron did not shout, but Optimus heard him nevertheless under the chant of the crowd. He spoke past gritted dental plates. “I still function.”

Optimus had witnessed lives extinguished, but only as a slow decay—never by brutality. He shuddered in a raw mixture of fascination and revulsion, and Teletraan blipped at him again in concern. After a moment's hesitation, Optimus responded with reassurance, and he copied his sensory input from the last several cycles into a single file. He had come quite some distance to see Megatron in living metal, and he would rather not risk the loss of the experience.

_::Sending footage,::_ Optimus said. _::Archive.::_

Teletraan beeped in acknowledgement and accepted the file. Back on the arena floor, the announcer had declared Megatron the victor, and drones had begun to remove Brutalion's lifeless shell. Optimus had heard rumors that the Pit bosses recycled the parts of fallen gladiators after each match, and now he did not doubt their truth. He wondered, however, if many of Megatron's opponents ever proved salvageable. In the upper seats of the arena, money changed hands, and around Optimus, betting began for the next fight. Megatron raised both arms to the roar of the crowd, and then he strode toward the doors through which he had entered.

A strange, slender mech leaned out of the shadows to greet him, and Megatron paused to listen. Their conversation was far below Optimus's audio range, and from its current satellite position above Kaon, Teletraan would fare no better. At length, Megatron cast his deepening scowl out over the crowd in the arena before entering the doors. The other mech, his frame unfamiliar and his faceplate consisting of a gleaming visor in red, retreated into the recesses of the doorway and disappeared.

_::Check the records for information on this mech,::_ Optimus asked on impulse, and he transmitted a single-frame image of Megatron's unknown friend. Teletraan indicated a wait of some duration.

Many of the mechs around Optimus had lost interest once Megatron had left the arena. Cleaning drones moved across the floor, and the next match did not begin for another half a breem. Some of the crowd gathered in knots around the creditors and collectors, but others drifted out the multitude of arched doorways, venturing back into the shadowy tunnels of the Forge. Optimus considered his options and followed through the nearest exit. The interior resembled less a viable building and more a warren, and whatever the original architectural plan for the structure, Optimus could not comprehend it. His goal—meeting Megatorn, face to face—remained just out of reach, and he still lacked any reasonable notion of how to achieve it.

On impulse, Optimus changed his trajectory. He left the broader tunnels filled by the audience members and detoured into the narrower, taller tunnels that led deeper into the gladiatorial hive.

He passed pairs and triads of mechs in the passage, but none of them paid him much mind. Once, he had to excuse himself around a pair of Seekers engaged in deep conversation, and the two huffed through their vents when they had to reorient their wings to let him past. A tiny mech, too small for anything but a symbiote, scowled at him in wary suspicion but sidled out from underfoot without challenging his presence.

Teletraan pinged and Optimus acknowledged it. **//Three possible matches to unknown individual. All are carrier class. One, Sailstar: musician of the Rylosect movement. Obscure for the last forty-six vorns. Two, Bitmount: criminal accused of second-tier theft and grifting. Incarcerated, presumed deactivated. Three, undesignated mech, possibly flight-capable. Present at the licensed gladiatorial match between Tankrome and Tsunamax, seventeen stellar cycles ago. No further records.//**

Although Optimus waited, no further information was forthcoming. _::Conclusions?::_ he prodded.

**//Third possibility is most likely. Label data sector for future information?//**

_::Please do.::_ Under less public circumstances, Optimus would have chuckled aloud. Teletraan found the notion of intelligence gathering—it declined the term _spying—_ highly engaging. Then again, so far as the members of the Science Consulate and Optimus himself had determined, the AI's primary programming had always revolved around locating and cataloging vast amounts of data.

“You're an unusual specimen.”

Gritting his dental plates together in annoyance, Optimus turned to face the mech who had spoken—and found himself looking up. The instigator stood two full heads above him, and the dual sensory fins at either side of his helm nearly brushed the tunnel's ceiling. Half again as broad as Optimus and far better equipped with armor and weaponry, he would have made a fine match for Megatron...and little wonder. Teletraan was pinging incessantly, but Optimus had already recognized the mech from poor-quality recordings of other gladiatorial matches.

_::Clench. Yes.::_

Teletraan responded with a little whirring note of uncertainty and distress. Trying to broadcast reassurance in return, Optimus considered his options. Depending on exactly what Clench wanted, this encounter could prove useful. The information that Optimus had gleaned from the data grids before his departure had suggested that Clench and Megatron had divided Kaon's underworld in halves, and despite the efforts of each to eliminate the other, both sides remained at any uneasy deadlock. No matter Clench's purposes, probability reports indicated high levels of danger.

“I'm new to Kaon,” Optimus said, glad to activate the simple program that disguised his voice. “Out of Iacon.” Lies based on a foundation of truth were always easier to remember.

Clench adjusted his stance with a casual flex of powerful cables, and in the process, he blocked any path of escape through the tunnel behind him. No going back, then. “Funny.” Optimus would not have expected so soft a voice to come from so massive a mech. “You don't look exactly...Iaconian. Not a gladiator, either...not any kind of Pit mech, that's for sure.” Optimus resisted the impulse to jerk away when Clench purposefully raised a hand and tapped a single, sharp finger against Optimus's chest plates. The impact vibrated just above Optimus's spark. “You come for your first taste of someone's spilled energon?” Clench said with a smirk just visible behind the shadow of his withdrawn battle mask.

“Something like that.”

“Feel like I should warn you. You've wandered into dangerous territory, mech.” Clench leaned in, and Optimus felt crowded nearly to the point of panic. “Gladiators use these tunnels for _business.”_ He ran a ventilation cycle, and the clinging heat of it crawled over Optimus's plating. “For pleasure, too. Did you come here looking for excitement? Hm?”

Optimus shifted his weight to his heel spars, ready to make an exit. “Not that kind.”

Incredibly, unbelievably fast, Clench shot out a hand and wrenched clawed fingers into the structure of Optimus's left arm. Optimus tensed, but kept himself from jerking away and doing damage to himself in the process. With uncomfortable effort, he resigned himself to the likelihood of a fight that he might well lose.

“Suggestion: desist.”

The orange glow of Clench's optics narrowed. Optimus angled a glance over his own shoulder and saw the unknown mech—Megatron's mysterious friend—standing behind them both and blocking the rest of the tunnel with outspread wing panels.

“I wonder why you would give a credit's worth of slag, Soundwave,” Clench drawled. His tone pretended nonchalance, but his fingers trembled against Optimus's interior components with suppressed rage. “This one ain't exactly your type. Must mean someone _else_ has an interest.” His claws tightened and pricked along a critical fuel connection, and Optimus struggled to maintain his calm. “I'd like to know why. And why he can't be bothered to come on over himself, if it means so _much_ to him.”

Teletraan updated its files with a triumphant click. Soundwave gave no indication of his intentions besides the obvious. “Clench: unworthy of Megatron's current attention. Repeat: desist.” That visor glittered from one edge to the other. “Or suffer appropriate consequences.”

Weighty steps preceded the arrival of two additional mechs at Soundwave's back. Both unfolded close-range weaponry adapted from equipment used in deep core mining.

Genuine or not, their posturing made Clench bare his dental plates in an unpleasant grin. He let Optimus go, though his claws left shallow punctures in two secondary fuel lines, and he withdrew a couple of steps. “Better finish your errand, then. Primus knows, your lord and master doesn't much like to wait. For anything.” Clench turned that grin on Optimus, and patches of rust showed between the seams of his dental plates. “Later, friend. Hope you make it back to Iacon...in more than one piece.”

Soundwave might have been looking at Optimus through that impenetrable visor. “You will accompany us.”

Folding his wing panels, Soundwave remained still as the other two mechs stepped past him. Optimus kept still in return, and he allowed the other two to grab and restrain him with nothing but powerful hands. “To where?” Optimus asked. He decided to use Clench's terminology. “To your lord?” One of the guards growled with the multitude of gears that lined his neck struts. Behind them, Clench chuckled.

The title garnered no reaction from Soundwave. “To Megatron. Suggestion: surrender.”

Optimus had already done so. Without argument, he followed the direction of his guards as Soundwave led them deeper underground. The tunnels narrowed, and the mechs to either side of Optimus dropped back a pace while keeping an excellent hold on his arms. The handful of mechs in these halls gave way at the first glimpse of Soundwave. Some scuffed or bent their plating, flattening themselves against the rough walls and dimming their optics, though Soundwave paid them no heed. Optimus followed as their group skirted the edge of a vast but low interior chamber, where two mechs he did not recognize fought in the center of a gathered crowd. Shouts and swearing faded into the distance once they entered a new tunnel and began a sharp ascent.

Teletraan mapped the corridors and additionally registered offshoots and possible directions. Optimus appreciated its expertise; his own sense of direction had never been strong. Now they encountered mechs more often, and Optimus recognized the symbol that recurred in coarse paint on each new wall. Megatron wore that symbol around his neck.

From the few holographic feeds and still images of the gladiator, Optimus had assumed the symbol represented a shield. So close, it better resembled an angular face, and its slanted optics stared at him in silent judgment from the center of a door at the tunnel's end.

They halted just outside, and Soundwave tapped gracile fingertips to the command panel. The panel flashed a negative in response.

Visor flickering, Soundwave took a backwards step. Optimus's guards glanced at each other, and one shook his head.

Optimus arched an optic ridge. “What now?”

Soundwave settled his plating and spread his wing panels, perhaps for better balance. “Wait.”

They waited. Half a megacycle slipped past, and then another. His guards lost interest in watching him so closely, and they drifted away to start a round of a game much modified, but still recognizable as traditional graft. Optimus leaned against the wall and opened himself carefully to Teletraan, and the AI readily shared all that it had gleaned from their walk through the interior of the Forge. Only Soundwave remained vigilant, unmoving, and only he did not need to jump to attention when the door beeped, unlocked, and cycled open.

“Enter.”

Both guards hurried to reestablish their hold on Optimus's arms. Soundwave waited until they had succeeded before allowing them through the door and into the room beyond, where the ceiling vaulted and the walls angled outward to give an unexpected sense of space. Soundwave did not follow them, and the door slipped shut and locked. At the opposite end of the room, on a raised platform, Megatron sat on a chair constructed from discarded plates of titanium. It might just as easily have been a throne, from his posture of cold, composed relaxation. His arms draped over the arms of the chair and hid them from view.

Optimus could see the brighter ribbons of new welds over one shoulder and against abdominal plating. More scars.

“An unexpected guest.” Megatron curved half his mouth into an unpleasant smile. “Sending and receiving messages to and from outside individuals is bound to attract my attention in the Forge. Even on a _private_ frequency. Welcome to Kaon,” Megatron said with civility edged by menace. “Optimus Prime.”

Optimus deactivated the vocal distortion program. “Megatron.” He flexed his joints and assumed his full height. The mech at his left squawked in alarm and retreated three full paces, and the grip of the mech at his right loosened in surprise before tightening again in grim obedience.

With a buzzing snort of his vents, Megatron shook his head. “You may release him, Grategun. Somehow I doubt this constitutes an official visit of state.”

The righthand mech retreated with a bristling growl of deep-seated gears. Both members of his unexpected honor guard hovered close, nevertheless, and Optimus supposed that he understood their feral brand of loyalty. Megatron did not need their protection. They offered it, instead, as a demonstration of submission—as a voiceless sign of their respect.

“What is it that you're doing here?” Megatron edged forward against the seat of the throne and his optics narrowed. Optimus took a single forward step.

“No one knows that I'm here,” Optimus said. “If that is what you're asking.”

“That is not at all what I'm asking.” Megatron stood in a single, violent motion, and with a moment's surprise, Optimus felt his vents activate in a whirring rush. Descending from the platform, Megatron lowered his head, those fine features turned angular by the uneven light of the room, and he studied Optimus with such focused intensity that Optimus tilted his head and returned the measuring stare. “What do you mean by coming here to Kaon?” Megatron came to a halt just out of reach, his hands coiled into fists. His smile was sinister. “Perhaps your education has been lacking, since your arrival on Cybertron. Perhaps they haven't yet taught you that these games are considered _illegal_ among the senators and aristocrats of the elite.” Megatron's voice lowered as he spoke through gritted dental plates. “No matter how many matches they finance. Or attend.”

Optimus eased a step closer and had the satisfaction of watching Megatron's struts stiffen in response. “I had heard. And I doubt you've imagined for a moment that the Council of Ancients has any idea where I am.”

With a chuckle, Megatron shook his head. “No. They wouldn't have you here. Not in the very Pit of the world.”

“Is that what Kaon is?”

Megatron's optics glittered. “Could it be anything else? You've seen the brutality here. We're covered in ash and the energon of other mechs. What would you call it?”

_Something true,_ Optimus thought, but he looked back into Megatron's burning optics and said nothing.

“Optimus _Prime,”_ Megatron said. “How the Council treasures you. Their marvel. Their honest miracle. The last living Prime. Barely half a vorn since your public debut, and I've heard the tale of their discovery of you more times than I care to count.” Discomfited for the first time, Optimus lowered his optics and shifted his weight, and Megatron arched his optic ridges in exaggerated surprise. “Modesty? Truly? I doubt your predecessors shared your humility.” They stood so close that Optimus sensed the radiant heat of Megatron's systems. Those fangs gleamed. “You're their visible representation of tradition and purity, and you've just watched me kill another mech with nothing but my hands.”

“Yes,” Optimus murmured.

Optics narrowing, Megatron gave him an equally narrow smile. “But you aren't afraid. Not of me. Are you.” Megatron was not asking—he could see the truth, and Optimus confirmed it by shaking his head. He hadn't taken such pains for secrecy, hadn't traveled so far through the Badlands just to waste time on fear.

“Look at you,” Optimus said. He wanted to touch, but he kept himself in check. “I've never seen anyone quite like you. I wanted to meet you for myself.”

Visible evidence of Megatron's surprise proved strangely satisfying, and Optimus stared back into the gladiator's widened optics and listened to the hiccuping stall of an engine powerful enough to shift bedrock. The movements of that mighty frame turned momentarily uncertain, and Optimus almost lifted his hands to grip those massive shoulders and balance them both. The urge was indescribable in its intensity. Instead, the rattling movement of one of the guards behind them broke the moment, reminding them both of their audience, and the lapse allowed Megatron to regain his poise.

“That paint is flaking everywhere,” Megatron said underneath a smirk. He swiped two long fingers against the plating of Optimus's shoulder, and the tips came away blue with transferred color. “You won't be able to hide what you are. Not here.”

Optimus agreed. “Not for long.”

“Are you counting on my protection, then?”

“I hope for your consideration, at least.” Optimus lifted one optic ridge and indulged in a wry smile. “My death would be something of a diplomatic catastrophe. For Iacon, first of all. But then for Kaon, too.” He could picture the Council's reaction to his murder, and while Kaon might eke out its grim existence with little governmental inference for now, the Senate's patience with organized crime and death sports could not last indefinitely.

The darkly narrow curve of Megatron's smile suggested that he recognized the threat. “You have my consideration, then.” Rubbing his fingertips together, he removed the remnants of paint. “You have my interest,” he added.

Optimus chose to accept the compliment. “I also hoped that you might show Kaon to me.”

“This is hardly a tourist destination. Shall I show you the black markets? The prostitution rings? Perhaps the smelting pools?”

“Show me where you've come from,” Optimus said, and he meant it in all sincerity.

Visibly wary, Megatron stared back at him with optics of smoldering red, and Optimus felt judged as thoroughly as if he had opened his chest and let Megatron examine his spark. He must have rung true, because at length, Megatron indicated a door at the back of the throne with a jerk of his head. “Come, then.” His smile glittered, sharpened by the tips of his fangs. “I'll show you.”

*****

They rumbled out of the sullen hulk of the Forge and descended into the sooty shadows of Kaon proper. Overhead, the sky seethed with ash and boiled crimson with the distant glow of smelting fires. Under the constant hum and pulse of massive machinery at work, voices rose now and then in rhythmic shouts or sudden shrieks, and Cybertron itself beat with a primordial rhythm of heat and slag and violent death. At any moment, Megatron expected this last Prime to turn away, like all his predecessors, and return to Iacon to lose this memory in comfort and compliance. Instead, Optimus followed in his wake and observed without comment—without quailing.

The factory had fallen into disrepair, and pollution had so blackened the transparasteel of its windows that they could make out nothing of the interior. A fire had swept half the twelfth floor, and no one had bothered to complete the repairs.

“My frame was produced here,” Megatron spat. The interminable fires of the nearby slagheaps limned Optimus's ill-fitted alt mode in crimson. “One of millions in the same basic model. Like them, I was designated a number.”

Optimus had chosen a mode with extensive treads, but he kept sliding backwards along the patched embankment. “D-16.”

“You know more than you let on.” Uncomfortably exposed, Megatron growled with his engine.

Finally secure in his footing, Optimus kept still, but Megatron noted a certain tension lining even his vehicle mode. “I have friendly connections to Cybertronian intelligence databanks. And I wanted to know more about you.” Optimus made the confession without any noticeable regret, and Megatron supposed that explained the encrypted data transmissions that had originally alerted Soundwave to an unusual presence in the Pits.

Megatron spoke with clipped impatience. “The mines I labored in have collapsed. I suppose you know that, as well.”

“They say you killed the Overseer.”

“No.” Megatron reversed his treads and turned back for the main road. “I should have,” he admitted. “But I did not.” Optimus shocked him by touching him—just a bare brush of side against side, in vehicle mode, and he had drawn away again before Megatron could protest. The friction lingered, and Megatron suspected that Optimus had streaked that paint against his plating, but Optimus said nothing, and Megatron overcame his minor irritation.

They drove over a grated roadway that provided bare protection from factory runoff, and Optimus preceded him until they reached an outcropping of blackened Therynin steel. Against the backdrop of coarse metal and spilling slag, the Prime shone eerily beneath all that cheap paint, and he drew to a halt just before the ground went unstable. Optimus transformed and straightened, and Megatron wondered for a moment why no one had stopped them—how no one had noticed what and who had followed him out into the surface hell of Cybertron. Then Megatron transformed and ascended the rise to stand beside him—a head taller than Optimus, but Optimus subtly shifted his frame and rested his weight in Megatron's direction, offering wordless acknowledgement.

Megatron crossed both arms over his chest and frowned. At the other edge of the spill, mechs with plating far heavier than any gladiator worked at the bank of the river of molten metal, dragging out bits of resistant metal for use in patching the furnaces. Sometimes they hooked the frames of empties, cast into the smelting pools. Once, Megatron had lent his strength when they snared the massive dorsal armor of an old Omega Guardian—some of the interior circuitry had remained intact despite the heat. They bent low over the river, and their long, hooked poles loosed trails of sparks into the sky.

“I hate it,” Optimus said. Firelight licked over his faceplates and reflected from his optic lenses. “But there's beauty in it.”

Trying his best to hold onto his annoyance and render it into anger, Megatron curled his hands into fists and struggled with the weakening of his resolve. This place had shaped him, had broken him, had strengthened him again. No outsider should so _easily_ view Kaon as he did.

This time, Optimus must have sensed his internal conflict, because he turned his head and caught Megatron's gaze with a questioning expression.

Megatron parted his lip components, but he chose not to answer. Instead, he descended the outcropping. “Follow me. Let me give you a...wider perspective.”

Returning to vehicle mode, they wound away from the pits and the main factory district, circling back toward the black pyramid that concealed the Forge and Megatron's adopted base of operations. They might have taken to the tunnels that wormed through the underbelly of the city, and thereby gained some relief from the pollution and the overhanging darkness of the twisted sky, but Megatron preferred to punish them both with the full experience of Kaon's distress. The building he had chosen stood relatively tall at two dozen levels—much higher than that, and the pollution prohibited habitation. The interior ramp led upward in mazing turns, and Megatron pushed his engine hard, gaining speed, daring Optimus to compete in such close quarters.

The Prime did not disappoint. They accelerated, skidding around each other and brushing occasionally against the walls of the tunnel with long trails of sparks. The tunnel narrowed as they neared its apex, and Optimus pulled ahead for a close victory as they burst out onto a geometric balcony with a heavy overhang.

Optimus had to transform and skid to a halt to avoid sliding right through the balcony rail, and Megatron chuckled as he unfolded back into his root mode. He hung back, letting Optimus absorb this view of Kaon from above. Hundreds of factory smokestacks belched sooty clouds into the sky, and the flickering glow of signs for bars and clubs and betting houses blurred with the unsettling flare of the smelting pits.

“It's worse than I expected,” Optimus admitted. The city cast him all in shades of black and red. He had lost more of his remaining veneer of blue paint during their race, and the quality of his plating created lurid reflections against the walls.

Regarding Optimus with narrowed focus, Megatron turned his back to the near wall and rested the edge of his shoulder spar against the metal with a subtle scrape. Hook had repaired him just a megacycle ago, and they had chosen to continue his gradual reformatting. The new connections ached. “You wanted Kaon,” Megatron said, and he shifted his plating just enough to ease the itching of replaced wiring. “The city of ash and slag. I hope you didn't expect a particularly warm welcome.”

“There's warmth here.”

Optimus lifted his optics past the horizon, and Megatron heard the click and whirr as superior lenses refocused on the sky above the shielded dome of Kolkular. A permeating hiss filled the air. Within moments, the rain chattered against the overhang and fell in a gleaming curtain just beyond their balcony.

“Like an inferno,” Optimus murmured. He stretched out the tips of his fingers toward the falling rain.

Megatron caught him around one wrist and yanked him backwards. Optimus impacted against Megatron's chest plating with a grunt of belated protest, and he was still for a klik as his stabilizers adjusted. “That's acid,” Megatron growled, and the fins of Optimus's temple antennae twitched at the vibration of his voice. “Idiot,” he said, but roughly and with more exasperation than rancor. “Haven't you heard of Kaon's acid rains?”

“Yes.” Optimus's wrist turned against Megatron's hold—just a subtle exertion of strength, testing the grip—and then the tension eased out of Optimus's frame. “But the Science Consulate reported last groon that the weather patterns have vastly improved.”

They stood so close that Megatron could feel the subsystemic flutterings of Optimus's plating. “That's an outright lie.”

Optimus canted his head ever so slightly and watched the rain. Manually pushing his vents to their widest aperture, Megatron drew in the strange sweetness of his scent: oil, acid, and the darker blend of soot and slag that shrouded all of Kaon. The etched glyph at one side of Optimus's helm caught his attention, and he followed the curves and angles with mingled admiration and frustration. 

_Prime._ It meant many things.

“Why did you come to Kaon?” Megatron asked again.

Optimus shifted his weight backwards, onto his heel spars, and the armoring of his back rubbed against the fastenings of Megatron's chest plates. Their ventilation systems synched—each cycling atmosphere from the other, warming them both in response to the chill of the weather. “I'll tell you,” Optimus said. Megatron's fingers twitched; he wanted to rest a hand against the attractive jut of the Prime's hip. Forestalling any overtures, Optimus turned, facing Megatron without moving away, and their optics met for far longer than was necessary or safe. “But shouldn't we go back?”

Wanting to reverse their positions, wanting to pin Optimus against the wall and judge the strength of that metal with his hands and his dental plates, Megatron managed a rough chuckle in response. “Not until the rain stops.” The notion of damage hardly disturbed him, but he was no idle fool, stepping out under a chemical shower to prove his endurance.

Optimus leaned closer. Megatron could see flecks of gold deep at the centers of those blue optics, and to his embarrassment, his intakes hitched in visceral response.

With a sigh of loosening joints, Optimus stepped fully past the boundaries of Megatron's personal space and touched him for the second time—the backs of his finger joints brushing along the plating beneath each of Megatron's optics, then following the scrollwork pattern over Megatron's chest plates. Unaccustomed to such bold physical contact, Megatron might have intercepted that hand, if he hadn't still had a grip on Optimus's wrist. Instead of demanding a halt, Megatron slipped his thumb into the joint. Wiring buzzed under the caress, Optimus's core temperature jumped by ten degrees, and Megatron pulled them entirely against each other under the shadow of the overhang. His free arm looped around Optimus's back, settling over the spinal struts with proprietary weight.

“You aren't what I expected.” Megatron had not meant to speak aloud.

Optimus trembled with a low and bittersweet laugh. “I wasn't quite what the Council expected, either.”

Arching his optic ridges, Megatron leaned against the wall at his back and ignored the twinges caused by their combined weight. “Are they true, then? All the rumors of their _discovery_ of you?”

“More or less. I don't remember. I was deep in stasis lock.” Optimus was not telling everything—Megatron was learning to keep at least one audial tuned to the undercurrents of communication out of Iacon, and he had heard classified reports that a dying crew had hardwired their last Prime into the functioning AI of their ship. He knew that a branch of the Science Consulate believed the Prime had retained some minimal awareness during all his million vorns trapped in that ship's wreckage. “They expected someone with wisdom...with dignity. Not a protoform repurposed into an adult. Not a sparkling that had never even taken on an alternate form.”

“My impression of the Council is that it is composed entirely of backwards-thinking lunatics in various stages of delusion.” Megatron quirked his lip components, and once again he felt the shudder of Optimus's low laughter. It was perhaps the most pleasant sound he had ever heard.

“You aren't far off. In all honesty.”

Given Optimus's current focus on truth, Megatron supposed that he could ask his questions in more detail. “They rarely give you a chance to speak in public. You said a dozen words in all at your own presentation to the Iaconian elite. Is the Council so afraid of what you might say?”

“Yes.” Their closeness hid Optimus's expression, but Megatron could hear his smile and even the touch of regret that backed it. “They have no idea at all what I'll say. I'm a stranger here, you see. Not just in Kaon, or even to Iacon. This planet is larger than any of my memories suggest. It's...unfamiliar. They would rather keep me on a short tether.”

“You slipped their leash.”

Optimus made a low rumble of agreement. “For a little while.”

Megatron would have liked to pretend that Optimus's next response made no difference to him. “How long, exactly, do you plan to stay?”

“Just long enough.”

“Long enough that they don't notice you've gone missing, you mean.”

“No.” Optimus smiled. “Just a little longer than that.”

Wondering if Optimus had meant this little jaunt into the Cybertronian slums as nothing but a show of mischief—a way of acting out against the Council of Ancients by demonstrating his own contrariness—Megatron frowned. “I don't need the sort of trouble you're sure to bring me,” he said. “You've come here with nothing to offer except the attention of the Council Guard and the vested interest of the Senate.” He was too close, even now, to the dangerous circumstances of his rise to power. His operation could not bear detailed scrutiny.

“Do you really fear that attention?” Optimus turned his head, and the tips of his antennae skimmed along Megatron's lower jaw. The sensation stilled them both. “You've been courting it. You've been begging the notice of Cybertron for the past ten stellar cycles.”

Megatron bared his dental plates. “On my terms.”

With a soft cycle of his vents, Optimus shook his head. “You won't be allowed to pick and choose. Not for much longer. I heard you, Megatron—even in Iacon, other mechs are hearing you now. How long, do you suppose, before the upper classes start taking as much an interest as the lower?” Megatron hissed, but he could think of nothing to say that was not further acknowledgement of the point. “I believe in what you say,” Optimus continued, and his voice lowered to the pitch of intimacy. “I want others to hear it.”

Subdued and vaguely flattered despite himself, Megatron considered the proper response. “And what shall I do, when the Guard discovers that I have possession of you? Plead ignorance?”

“I can't prevent them from finding me.” That bitter tone reentered Optimus's voice. “Eventually.”

Megatron buzzed a snort. “They won't be pleased to discover your location. You might have picked a swifter way to destroy yourself—leaping directly into one of the smelting pools, perhaps—but I can't imagine a more certain path to deactivation than rolling into Kaon without so much as a point of contact. You had no assurance of my good will.”

Silence fell between them for a cycle or two. Apparently, Optimus did not intend to argue the point, although a measure of tension had coiled in the cabling of his back.

“You never promised me your protection,” Optimus murmured at length, and when his fingers splayed against scratched and pitted chest plating, Megatron found his arms and his hands tightening with reflexive force. “Do I have it anyway?”

Megatron growled. “No one will touch you.”

One smooth thumb stroked along the seam of Megatron's chest plates. “I believe you,” Optimus said.

Megatron supposed he should be disgusted by so much open honesty. No one would survive long in Kaon, behaving like this with any unknown mech, and such trust would destroy even a Prime in short order. No one in this city cared much for who they stripped and dismantled, so long as they left no evidence.

But then again, Optimus had not chosen to trust any common mech. He had come to Megatron, and to Megatron alone.

That thumb kept stroking, stroking, and Megatron struggled not to fidget under the maddening friction. The sensation left him hollow with longing and aching for fulfillment in ways he would rather not name, when he had little time and even less energy to expend on such distractions. Despite that fact, his fingertips eased into the gaps between Optimus's plating and brushed at the edges of raw circuitry. Optimus's engine turned over and settled into a vibrating purr.

“The rain has stopped.”

Megatron came back to himself with a flicker of his optics. The change in the weather had escaped his notice, but then, acid rains never lasted long. He hesitated over his next offer, but impatience and desire pushed aside his wariness. “There's something else—somewhere else—I want to show you.”

Pushing himself fully upright, Optimus left a steadying palm pressed to Megatron's chest plates. “I'll come with you,” he said.

*****

Optimus had found himself subjected to all manners of high grade following his upgrading and his presentation to the public, but nothing had set his circuits buzzing quite so quickly as the contents of the cube that Megatron had pushed into his hand. He had drained that one without suspecting its potency, and just as quickly, Megatron had given him another. Sipping this one, he tried to retain some control over his perceptions—over his actions—and he leaned back in a padded seat near the bar and felt the entire length and breadth of his sensory network buzzing with overcharge. He could no longer quite recall the name of this oil house. He barely remembered how they had come to be here, and he had asked no reasons of Megatron. _There's something else I want to show you,_ Megatron had said, and Optimus had followed.

Around him, the lighting flickered and the mechs of Megatron's inner circle swirled through the shadows like winged and warrior-framed primitives of the underrealms. Few individuals remained any more sober than he did—even Soundwave swayed in the corner between the seats and the bar, and the tips of his wing panels brushed against the walls in rhythm with the music.

Admittedly, Optimus might have lapsed into uneasiness despite the high grade—he was vulnerable here, no question—but Megatron had not strayed far.

Tilting his head against the back of the seat, Optimus adjusted his line of sight to bring the gladiator into its absolute center. Megatron stood at the bar, his face in profile, his dental plates gleaming for a moment in a grin. The two mechs at his far side grinned as well, and their shoulder plates trembled as they laughed. They were similar in build—perhaps even spark twins—and their patchwork plating and mismatched weaponry hinted at a recent life as empties or worse. They were selling something, and they kept showing it to Megatron, who humored them but gave no indication of real interest in anything but the half-empty cube in his hand. The powerful lines of his frame shifted, the edges gleaming when he laughed. Again, Optimus recalled that first glimpse of him in the arena: all shadows and harsh planes of bright silver. A shiver travelled the full length of every strut in Optimus's back.

He could pinpoint the moment that Megatron became aware of an audience—when his shoulders lifted into subtle angles and the quality of his ventilations changed. Megatron let his optics slide to one side and met Optimus's gaze.

Disinterested in pretended bashfulness, Optimus stared back at him with an expression that betrayed all the ferocity of his admiration.

Megatron's optics brightened and blazed. He turned, facing Optimus completely, and his shift in attention left the two mechs talking first at each other and then to the back of his helm. System readouts recalculated at the edge of Optimus's peripheral vision; Megatron was running hot. Merely overcharge, perhaps, but Optimus felt the skip and flutter of his own ventilations in response. Behind Megatron, the two hopeful businessmechs exchanged a glance, and one of them dared to tap a hesitant fingertip at Megatron's shoulder plating. The warning growl they received in return rivaled the music in volume, if just for a moment. Other nearby conversations faltered. The offending mech flinched backwards out of easy reach.

Abandoning his unfinished cube and the patchwork twins, Megatron crossed the room in a handful of steps and slowed to a halt in front of Optimus. His broad frame blocked the view of the rest of the room—nothing but the two of them, Megatron trapping him in the seat—and Optimus had no complaints.

“Come here,” Megatron said.

Staring up at him, Optimus flickered his optics and chuckled. “Of course. If I could stand.”

Megatron rested his hands on his hip joints and frowned, an oddly petulant expression for so massive a mech, but then his lip components lifted into a smirk. “The Kaonian idea of high grade is probably more _potent_ than refined.”

“I would agree with that.” To his own vague surprise, Optimus managed to set his cube to one side without sloshing it all over the furniture. He settled back into place and then stretched out a hand that trembled only incidentally. Megatron was not quite close enough to touch. For a moment, Megatron looked down at that hand, and then he took it in his own. His fingers wrapped tight around Optimus's wrist. The pressure created startling bubbles of feedback along Optimus's sensory net, and he dragged his fingertips along Megatron's palm to hear the gladiator ventilate once, harsh, loud. “Why here?” Optimus asked.

Coming closer, Megatron eased into the space between Optimus's parted knees. Metal ghosted along metal, tantalizing. “I like this place.” That would be reason enough, but Megatron continued. “The proprietor owes me something. Those that are...unwelcome...are kept out.”

Ah. Optimus understood him. For a given definition, this place was _safe._

“We needn't stay,” Megatron said, and his voice dropped into an undertone that focused all of Optimus's attention. Prickling sensitivity, not quite uncomfortable, spread through his connectors and found an answering awareness in Megatron's optics.

Promising heat cycled through his systems. “Yes,” Optimus said, and at that moment someone dared to interrupt by resting a hand against Megatron's upper arm.

“Megatron! My favorite gladiator. My favorite customer, too. Knew just where to find you.” The voice carried a slick undertone that stiffened Optimus's struts. The mech to whom it belonged seemed formed mostly of shadow, and his plating gleamed with strange reflections, like wet oil. Unusually large optics shone violet from the tapered points of his face.

For a slow, silent moment, Megatron stared at the offending hand, and then his optics narrowed as he lifted them to the other mech's face. “Swindle.”

Swindle seemed clever enough to realize the danger. He withdrew his fingers with a practiced movement that looked casual instead of hasty, and he hazarded a grin at Megatron's darkening scowl. “You're just the mech I need. Just _wait_ until you see what I've picked up.”

“I'm not currently interested in any deals,” Megatron replied. His fingers tightened, and Optimus could not decide if the grip was a warning or a promise. “Business or otherwise.”

Swindle's grin widened, and he laughed as if Megatron had made a joke rather than delivered an ultimatum. When Swindle spoke again, his voice had smoothed into a different tone—lower and less genial, more direct. “I think you'll want a look at this. It was a steal, if you know what I mean. I picked it up with you in mind.”

Optimus observed the fine shift in Megatron's optics—a different sort of interest.

“Where were you.”

Grin sharpening, Swindle tilted his head when Megatron looked at him again. “Kolkular. Somewhere...underneath the Vosian embassy.”

Megatron's ventilation hiss and corresponding hesitation brightened the unsettling glitter of Swindle's optics. Dental components brushing together, Megatron tightened his grip on Optimus's hand until the pressure bordered on pain. “I don't suppose this could wait.”

“Not really.” Mouth components tightened as Swindle shook his head. “Really need to get it out of my servos and into someone else's circuitry, in fact. Going, going, gone. I've been looking for you.”

Megatron's chuckle caressed at Optimus's receptive sensors. “I was otherwise occupied.”

“You're _preoccupied,”_ Swindle noted with a tidy smirk in Optimus's direction. “But you're going to want a look.”

“Yes.” Abruptly, Megatron's full focus returned to Optimus, and Optimus canted his head and smiled into the intensity of the gladiator's frown. Megatron appeared at war with something in himself, and Optimus could discern the outcome of the conflict as material greed fought physical desire and the former trumped the latter. “You will stay here,” Megatron said in so low and threatening a tone that Optimus pulled at the hand around his. Megatron moved a step closer in response. “You will go nowhere else until I return for you. Or until I send for you. Repeat it.”

Optimus laughed, but softly, and his fingers curled against Megatron's palm. “I'll stay here.”

“That will do,” Megatron muttered. Disentangling their hands, he turned to Swindle, and his frown deepened. “Let's keep this quick.” Swindle bobbed his head in eager agreement and hastened in the direction of the exit. With a sharp gesture from Megatron, Soundwave collected himself and straightened before following the two of them. Before he disappeared into the crowd, he cast a narrow glance in Optimus's direction, and the meaning was clear enough.

_Sit. Stay._

Optimus decided that he did not mind the explicit order, under the circumstances—not when he felt incapable of going anywhere.

His compliance faltered a bit as the first megacycle passed into the second. With Megatron's departure, the atmosphere of the oil house began a subtle slide in a different direction. The music changed to a faster beat, turning increasingly frenzied, and the tri-level floor filled with mechs painted in gaudy shades over the gray and black of their Kaonian base frames. Darkness showed through every scratch. Groups of mechs ordered high-grade energon blended with consumption-grade oil, and the mixture created a blueish haze of combustive fumes. The place reeked of glitz laid heavy over garbage. Optimus found himself longing for the raw atmosphere of the Kaon outside these walls.

At first, the others in the establishment had avoided him, but that, too, changed with the atmosphere. The newly-arrived mechs and femmes had not seen him with Megatron, and the paint of his disguise had worn enough to make him a curiosity rather than a part of the background. A pair of low-ranking gladiators bought him a drink, which he took great care in refusing. Even after that rejection, they hung about in the nearby corners, too close for comfort, and only the sudden appearance of Grategun finally compelled them to try their luck elsewhere.

Grategun loomed over Optimus's chosen seat for several cycles in ominous silence. No one else dared to approach in his presence.

“Thank you,” Optimus said.

Grategun met his gaze only after several awkward moments. “Not all of the mechs here are Megatron's,” he grunted at length. “Watch it.”

Right. “Where are you?” Optimus asked. He should have assumed that Megatron would leave some sort of watch over him, and the knowledge of Grategun's protection let his struts ease into something far shy of relaxation, but nevertheless more comfortable than his previous anxiety. He could now observe this place with interest rather than apprehension.

“By the door. Keeping my sensory network tweaked on high.” Pausing, Grategun looked at Optimus again, and something else—something soft and bright—entered the flat red of his optics. Optimus had seen that look innumerable times since his introduction to the Iaconian public, but he had not suffered it once since his arrival in Kaon. “Is it true?” Grategun had lowered his voice nearly to the point of unintelligibility. “Are you—”

“It's true,” Optimus murmured, choosing impulsive honesty over considered care. Megatron had already spoken the truth in front of this mech.

Grategun stared at him for a click longer. “Primus.”

Optimus decided against correcting him, and relative silence fell between them again.

“You chose right,” Grategun said. Optimus turned his attention back to his guard, but Grategun was looking with great determination at the far wall. “Megatron. You chose right. I would follow Megatron into the Pit.” The words buzzed with a ferocity that tasted like electric charge. “I already did, I guess. There's nowhere else to go but up.” Turning on one wheeled foot, Grategun shouldered aside the unlucky mechs in his path and stalked back toward his position at the door.

For a moment, Optimus considered following, but he quashed the impulse in favor of picking up his discarded cube and swirling the unappetizing contents. His overcharge had largely passed, and he would rather not invite it back—he wanted the advantage of clear thought.

He could dismiss Grategun's words as the over-enthusiasm of a sycophant; Megatron had attracted plenty of those. Instead... He chose to remember that evidence of loyalty. It was affirmation. It was validation of the longing that had brought him out of Iacon, across the Wastes, and into the seething hub of Cybertron's lowest castes.

Around him, the venue grew steadily less civilized, but Grategun's presence had worked some sort of magic upon the crowd, and the few seats surrounding Optimus remained empty. That changed only when the two mechs from earlier—Megatron's patched twins—gathered their courage and crept closer. The one painted blue over gray finally dared to perch two seats down, orange optics filled with curiosity instead of malice, and when Grategun did not appear to shoo him away, Optimus made a beckoning gesture with one hand.

The blue one introduced himself as Switch; the other was Brake. After their intimate witnessing of Megatron's show of possession, they behaved circumspectly, and when Optimus declined anything further to drink, neither of them pressed the point. They assumed that Optimus, like Megatron, was from the gladiatorial circuit, and Optimus did not disabuse them of the notion. “Tell me about Megatron,” he said instead. Optics brightening with more than overcharge, Switch began to speak with enthusiasm on a subject of real interest to all three of them. The two mechs had known Megatron prior to his current fame. Within half a cycle, both were narrating one of Megatron's first fights—a double match of Megatron alone against two modified loading bots from the Praxian docks.

“Each one was so wide—” Switch spread his arms.

“Wider than Megatron is tall!” Brake finished.

“And Megatron, he managed somehow, he got between the two—”

“They all got tangled together. Megatron got his arms under their plating. Cabling everywhere!”

“All three of them went down,” Switch said. “It went up on the boards as Total Kill—all participants deactivated—until the cleanup drones pulled Megatron out from underneath. He lost both arms and a leg too, I think. But he survived.”

“He always does.” The new voice was low and sweet. It came from just over Optimus's shoulder.

Jerking forward, Optimus swiveled to stare at its originator. The seeker was pale gray—not painted, but polished, and the novelty of so bright a frame in so dark a place made Optimus reset his visual array. Narrowing violet optics in return, the new mech curled svelte claws over the back cushion of Optimus's seat. The angles of his wings flared outward.

“Survival is Megatron's key personality component,” the seeker said, face plates curving in a slow smile. “I think it was burned into his mainframe instead of coded.” Rounding the arrangement of seats, the seeker came to a halt in front of Optimus and stared at him. Wing panels stretched and gleamed under the flickering lights.

Optimus arched his optical ridges. “Do you know him?”

“Rather well.” Glancing sideways at Switch and Brake, the seeker flicked his wings with a sneer. “Make yourselves scarce,” he suggested.

While Switch opened his mouth in near-protest, Brake grabbed his twin's wrist and shook his head. They retreated, but the doubtful parting looks they cast at Optimus were eerily similar.

Once they had gone, the seeker folded his wings tight and high against his back, and then he arranged himself himself into the seat that Switch had vacated. “Kaon is full of hopeless acolytes,” he said, with a wave of his claws that barely brushed against Optimus's shoulder. His voice was smooth as refined oil.

Optimus gave no answer. “Who are you?”

“Slipshot.” The seeker dipped one wing panel and rubbed it against the back of the seat. He smiled. “A pleasure to meet you.”

“Likewise,” Optimus murmured, and used the alias he had chosen before arriving in Kaon. “Orion is my designation.”

Smile fracturing into a grin, Slipshot said, “No, it is not. But the pleasure is still mine.” He leaned close, too close, with the vents at his neck gusting against Optimus's plating. “Optimus Prime,” he added, barely audible.

Optimus dared a glance toward the door, but Grategun did not appear, and after a moment or two, he let the tension ease from his struts. This mech must be part of Megatron's faction. “Who could have told you that?” he asked, with a cautious smile of his own. He had met a number of flight-capable mechs in Iacon, some seeker models among them. Slipshot, with his wide-set, upturned optics and his double-jointed legs, seemed familiar as a result.

“Who do you think?” Slipshot dropped a hand to Optimus's thigh. Claws curled over the plating like bold punctuation.

Regarding Slipshot steadily, Optimus ignored the unwelcome hand until Slipshot finally withdrew it. For a click, Optimus wondered just why Slipshot had come, and if Megatron had sent him...and if so, for what exact purpose. He could not imagine Megatron as the sort of mech who would offer what he wanted— _who_ he wanted—to anyone else. “I imagine his business will end soon,” Optimus said at length, keeping his tone flat.

Leaning back, Slipshot crossed both arms over his chest and draped one leg over the other. “He left you here,” the seeker noted. “Alone.”

Irritation prickled just below the surface of Optimus's calm, but he dismissed it before he could determine its ultimate source. “That doesn't bother me.” Whatever novelties Swindle offered, Optimus doubted that they could hold Megatron's attention for much longer, and he reassured himself with the certainty of Megatron's eventual return.

Slipshot studied him for several moments, and then he smiled—wryly, as if in concession of a point. “He sent me.” The seeker adopted a tone of confession. “To collect you.”

Optimus's spark gave a pulse, one so strong that he almost pressed a hand against his chest. His fuel circulation actually quickened; he hadn't realized quite how much he had wanted out of this place. Now, with the opportunity so easily offered, he could hardly get to his feet quickly enough. “I can't imagine better news,” he said.

Humming faintly, Slipshot stood as well and stretched his wings. “We'll go out the back. Follow me.”

They exited the main floors. At Slipshot's direction, they entered a door to the back of the sound system and navigated a set of storerooms in near darkness. The throb of the music sent jarring vibrations through Optimus's audial components, and his visual feeds fritzed with static at the edges. Now the seeker seemed to be in a hurry, and he dropped all his languid pretensions to rush them into a narrow hallway behind stacks of crates. Another door was just ahead, and Slipshot went directly to the security panel beside it.

Optimus hesitated. The overstimulation of the music still created jagged waves through his sensory net. “Where is Grategun?” he asked. Slipshot had keyed open the door, but the passageway outside it was darker than the narrow hall.

Pausing at the question, Slipshot stared back at him with incomprehension flickering through his optics. His wing panels shifted, flattening in a way that Optimus recognized as discomfort—internal stimulus rather than external. Then the seeker's expression cleared. “He'll meet us there. Come on. Hurry.”

“No,” Optimus began, because the fog of eagerness had cleared and he had finally recognized his mistake—because he would see Grategun, at least, before he agreed to move another step—but something caught sharp and strong against the back of his neck and wrenched him around toward the door. Struggling, he clawed at any obstacle he could reach, including the two mechs who tried to subdue him, but the doorframe crumpled under his hold and he was jerked out into the darkness.


	2. Part II

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long last! And like Lady Oneiros said.... Oh Optimus, you'll get into any stranger's van.

## Part II

Optimus fought until a fist cracked across the joint of his jaw, and disorientation fed crippling static through his sensory arrays. A hand locked around both of his wrists and yanked them over his head. A broad frame slammed him against the wall at his back, and his spinal struts bent from the strain. Pain sent his ventilation systems stuttering.

The voice that spoke against his audio receptor started him struggling again, nevertheless.

“Hello again.” Clench smiled. Optimus could _feel_ it, the curl of those lip components against his neck. The gladiator had withdrawn his battle mask.

Optimus cycled his vocoder and started to speak, but Clench crushed his free hand against Optimus's throat and rendered the protest into a bark of feedback.

“You know, I didn't quite believe it,” Clench said with amiable calm, as if continuing a previous conversation. “But now... I can see it, I guess. No. I can _definitely_ see it.” With no other warning, his fingers flashed from Optimus's throat to his helm, and metal ripped as the gladiator tore away the heavier plating that disguised Optimus's delicate antenna points. “Incredible.”

With his throat cabling freed again, Optimus could clear the static from his sensory net. He worked on correctly processing his surroundings. The door panel had closed again; Clench had shoved him against it. The oil house was well out of his reach, now. Beyond the scents of rust and refuse, Optimus's sensors detected the acrid fumes of the smelters, and if he looked upward, he could barely discern the red glow of Kaon's polluted sky. The walls of the buildings sloped outward and almost met four stories above his head.

An alleyway, then. Pity he still had little enough idea where he was in terms of Kaon as a whole. Teletraan could lead him—perhaps—but only if he could make an escape.

Something of his intentions must have shown in his expression, because Clench forced him tight against the door again. “Careful,” Clench advised, his voice low. “Can't say I really want to damage you.” The grip tightened, distorting a handful of minor gear connections and belying the words. “Not too much, anyway. But I guess you're valuable enough that the Council would pay for you broken or whole. Wouldn't they.”

A darkening chill rushed through Optimus's lines. “Am I a prisoner?”

Still exposed, Clench's face plates rearranged themselves into a pointy grin. “You're a hostage, Lord Prime. The best bargaining chip that Kaon could hope for.”

Teletraan was whirring distress along their connection, and Optimus pinged at it until it settled into a quieter buzz of discontent. “Is leverage what you want, then?” he asked. “You have political goals?” Perhaps Megatron and Clench were more philosophically similar than his initial research had suggested, and that thought gave him a little hope.

Clench laughed, instead. “Don't be a glitch. Equality is a dream for the dull-sparked. Megatron thinks he's _political_ after skimming a few slanted histories, but he's deluding himself. It's all about violence. It's all about power, Prime.” Fingers prodded into Optimus's circuitry. “What I want is Kaon. And I'm going to get it. The Council is going to hand it to me. In exchange for you.”

Hope dissipated like so much industrial steam. _::Call Soundwave. Call Megatron. Tell them where I am.::_ Clench leaned even closer, and the heat of his vents left condensation against Optimus's clavicle struts. _::Call all of them. Be loud.::_

Teletraan clicked in full obedience, and Optimus shivered with the fuzzy sensation of distance as the AI redirected its attention accordingly. He felt abruptly alone.

“Don't worry, Optimus Prime.” Clench's grin widened, and something heavy and unpleasant lurched through Optimus's fuel tanks. “I'm not going to break you.” A hand worked for a moment at Optimus's midsection, pulling exposed cables and jerking at wiring. “I am going to hurt you, though. Can't help that.”

Wings twitched uneasily to Optimus's left. “Hey,” Slipshot said. “We've got to move. We can't stay out in the open like this.”

Clench laughed again, but he pulled back until only his grip on Optimus's wrists remained. “Scared?” He turned his barbed smile on the seeker, but Slipshot stared back with grim steadiness, unwilling to rise to the bait. “Grow some struts.” To Optimus's relief, Clench's battlemask slid back into place. “We got him out clean. But I guess we can't wait around when we've got places to be. Got to get you somewhere safe, Prime.” Clench loosened his grip just enough to reposition Optimus's hands from above his head to in front of his waist. Optimus shifted his feet and dug his heel spars into the uneven slag of the alleyway floor.

“I'll never go with you willingly.” Admittedly, Clench could probably drag him, but that would slow their pace—hopefully enough so for Megatron to catch them.

“You'll still go,” Slipshot muttered, and he produced a pair of stasis cuffs. He handed them to Clench before pivoting to press up against Optimus's back, locking his joints, forcing him into compliance. Clench took visible delight in fastening both cuffs at too tight a setting for Optimus's frame. As they activated, Optimus muffled a groan through his vents and shivered with the numbing of every responder from his wrists to his elbow joints. Helplessness frustrated him like nothing else.

Tilting his head, Clench studied Slipshot over Optimus's shoulder and narrowed his optics in the beginnings of irritation. “What's the hurry?” The corners of his mouth lifted behind the edges of his mask. “Better not be correcting your moral compass, Slips.”

Slipshot was silent for a moment. “It took longer than I would have liked. To get him out of there.”

Clench paused long enough to look at him and laugh. “Losing your touch?”

“Let's _go,”_ the seeker said, vocalizations dissolving into a hiss. Long claws flattened against Optimus's back and propelled him forward, nearly into collision with Clench.

Still chuckling unpleasantly, Clench jerked Optimus along behind him and avoided impact. The alley outside the oil house led to an intersection of three other alleys; Clench chose one without noticeable hesitation. They passed through a doorway made invisible by shadow, then took a crossing over a pit of reeking, liquid slag.

The repetitive twists of unlit passages ended Optimus's lingering hope that he might escape and return to the Forge on his own resourcefulness—he had lost track of their direction within a handful of alleyways and open sewer grates. None of the maps he had downloaded from the grids matched these pathways, and Clench never returned to the marked roads of the city. Why would he? In these dark corners, only Megatron could match him. Teletraan would fare better at tracking them. Optimus could only hope to literally drag his feet and impede their progress.

Predictably, Clench finally lost patience. When Optimus took a purposeful fall across a stack of scrap metal, the gladiator whirled on him, optics burning sullen fury, and kicked him in eerie, silent rage until Slipshot shouted and shoved his way between them.

Clench subsided only at length, and Optimus gathered himself into an aching semblance of calm. Pain shot through the struts of his torso when he settled on his knees, and minor fracture alerts flashed red across his visual feeds. Audio system distortions released as a wracking moan. He waited, but no one came to investigate the disturbance or its cause. His was just another anonymous outcry among thousands. Kaon paid no heed to the cries of its damned.

“Don't do it,” Slipshot was saying in a desperate undertone. Fighting Clench back to reason had bent one of his wings at the base. “Kill him and it's all a waste. All of it.”

Radiating sullen fury, Clench vibrated with the rapid pulse of his cooling fans. His plating heaved and shifted as heat bled in waves from his interior components. Optimus saw him for what he was—for what the Iaconian media declared Megatron to be—an irrational, irredeemable monster made for nothing but destruction. His veneer of civility could not conceal the corruption at the core.

“Let's finish it,” Slipshot said, once Clench had gone entirely still.

“Yeah.” Clench's ventilations came in short, cold gusts. “It's all right. We'll be at the gatelock soon.” Lunging at Optimus, he grabbed the short tether between the stasis cuffs and wrestled Optimus back to his feet.

Optimus stumbled, wincing, but righted himself as Clench jerked him forward again. Gatelock? Kaon proper had no gatelocks; they were meant to keep the strata of society separated. The gatelocks outside Iacon kept its perimeters secure, while the gatelocks outside the city center protected the Council buildings and the Shrine. The palace required locks of its own. In contrast, Kaon needed no protections. Mechs came to Kaon when they had nowhere left to go. Castes dissolved within these indistinct boundaries, and anyone with the proper strength of spark—or even just an excess of physical strength, like Clench—could rise above the rest.

In Kaon, the only location that might need gatelocks was—

Optimus faltered again. Clench was taking him somewhere _safe,_ certainly, for a given value of the word. Somehow, the gladiator had bribed or beaten his way to a gatelock code, and unless Megatron could succeed in doing the same, then once they had passed through the lock from Kaon into Kolkular... Optimus would be out of Megatron's reach.

Shaken, he broadcast distress to Teletraan, which could respond only with distress in return.

_**//Megatron is coming//** _

_**//Transmitting your coordinates//** _

How far to the gatelock? Optimus could make no meaningful guesses, but Clench had begun to hurry now, and Optimus dragged along in his wake, daring to slow them by limping as if one of his spinal struts had broken. Slipshot ranged further ahead and peered around corners before leading them through widening passages. Structures crowded every available space, but most stood dark and abandoned. Guard patrols would discourage habitation too close to Kolkular's borders.

Once, Slipshot shrank back from an intersection of alleys and pushed his way into the collapsing frame of a building. Clench shoved Optimus hard against a wall, then forced him into a crouch and squatted beside him until a six-mech patrol had passed. Their floodlights swept the alley, but Clench's dark plating blended into the rest of the scrap like another shadow, and he shielded Optimus from view.

Once they had gone, Clench pushed back upright with a hiss. As if in afterthought, he grabbed Optimus by the stasis cuffs and did the same for him.

Pain jolted through the connectors of Optimus's right forearm, and he bit back his startled cry. A careful test of his joints confirmed that while his left arm remained numb, he could curl the fingers of his right hand. Obtained through whatever illegal or illegitimate means, the cuffs must have had circuit damage or a design flaw, and the violence to which Clench had subjected them had finally snapped some of the connections.

Clench had not noticed anything—he was already jerking Optimus along again in his wake. Optimus had no idea what good he might do himself or anything else with one working hand, but any small victory was a victory nonetheless.

“How much longer?” Clench growled when Slipshot had freed himself from his hiding place.

If possible, Slipshot looked paler than ever under the dusting of grit he had accumulated during their journey from the oil house. Even his voice sounded worn with strain, and Optimus wondered what in all the world the seeker was getting out of this. “Three more kliks. Let's _go._ You know they won't wait.”

Clench grunted, but followed when Slipshot chose the left path at the intersection. He gave Optimus no choice but to follow, as well.

Around them, the landscape emptied. The next road Slipshot chose widened outward into a full, if slanted, alley, and with growing dread, Optimus saw the bulb of Kolkular looming above the ragged buildings ahead of them. It filled the sky like a thunderhead, and despite the blurring effect of Kaon's poisonous atmosphere, the city glinted with several million pinpricks of light. Every light looked like a gleaming optic in a hungry, surging swarm. Optimus thought he would purge.

They emerged into the sudden glow of ancient halogen lights. Two burned at either side of a hexagonal split in the side of a wall so tall that Optimus could not make out the top of it. He could only see Kolkular itself, stretching upward and outward until it blanked the sky. Great gears edged the door, but the light provided barely enough illumination to give a suggestion of their shape and size. A mech, visible only by the glow of his optics, waited at the base of one. He stepped out of the shadows to greet Slipshot and revealed himself as a young groundframe. The insignias so recently painted at his shoulders marked him as a guard of low rank.

Clench surged ahead and Optimus came up short and sharp against his back. “Open the lock.”

The guard looked at Slipshot, who nodded. “All right.” He paused, and his expression turned furtive. “I want fifteen hundred thousand.”

Clench smiled, but his wrist made a whirring purr as the joint shifted hand to photon pistol. “We already agreed on a sum. Open the lock.”

For a few nanoclicks more, the guard delayed, and Clench shoved Optimus to the side before taking a forward step. “All right,” the solider repeated, holding up his hands. “Transfer it first, or you can stand here until the Captain finds you. Transfer it and I'll open up.”

Gun barrel lifting, Clench stared him down for an edged moment, and then the gladiator chuckled. “Right.” Another moment of private communication, and he grinned behind his mask. “Done. Watch it, bitlet. You don't want to make me remember who you are.”

The guard stilled, probably to check the transferred funds, and then he flattened his lip components together into a thin line and turned to the gatelock door. “It only takes three at a time. Otherwise the alarms go off. I have to go with you.”

Slipshot's wings flared. “If it takes three, we can go alone. Give me the code.”

“No.” The guard faced them, and Optimus saw the trembling in his outermost plating—the way his fingers constantly flexed and his audial constructs nearly vibrated as they swiveled to catch the slightest sound. The penalty, were he caught, must be worse than deactivation. Pointing at Clench, the guard shook his head once as his vents fired in rapid gusts. “He paid to open the lock. Not for the code.”

“Guess you get what you pay for,” Clench quipped. Optimus had sidled a few steps away, more by instinct than initiative, but the gladiator wrenched him close again by the cabling of a damaged elbow joint. The same hand lifted to the back of Optimus's neck and forced him forward. “We'll go first.”

Sudden heat hissed through Slipshot's vents. “Planning to leave me here?” the seeker said, in a mild tone that made the terrible grimace of his face plates surreal. “To take your punishment?”

Clench narrowed his optics in amusement. “You really think I'm going to leave him with you? With anyone?” He gave Optimus a violent shake for emphasis. “Sit tight. Show a little _trust.”_

“I should have let you try this on your own.” Slipshot curled his claws into fists.

With just the low thrum of a laugh, Clench nodded to the guard, who slid open a keypad beside the door and tapped out a pattern far too swift for Optimus to follow. “You had your chance—you chose a side. Wouldn't bet on Megatron letting you choose again, either.” A vibration too deep for sound jarred through them all; the air pressure changed as the great gears gradually revolved. The gatelock door pulled apart and spilled a geometric slash of light across the filth of Kaon. Inside, a white space streaked with rust allowed barely enough room for three mechs of Optimus's size. It looked like a lift, and Optimus supposed that was right: it would take them upwards into Kolkular. Stepping over the threshold, the guard hurried Clench with the wave of a hand.

Optimus fought. He flung his shoulder into the wall and jerked his head backwards, hoping to catch Clench full across his faceplates despite the battle mask. No such luck, of course—Clench had labored even longer in the Pits than had Megatron—but the gladiator swore anyway and struck across Optimus's shoulder plating. Optimus twisted, catching the blow at an angle and falling against the edge of the door rather than through it.

Trapped beneath him, his working hand snagged against the narrow lip at the base of the door track, and only that tenuous grasp prevented Clench from barreling forward and shoving him bodily into the lift. One massive hand wrapped around the base of his throat, nevertheless, and began dragging him upward.

Something struck the wall just above Optimus's head. It rebounded and spun. Clench hissed and staggered backward when it aimed for his face in a flurry of whirling blades.

When Clench finally caught it and flung it away, it flipped itself in midair and boomeranged to land against the door edge just a hands-breadth from Optimus's head. It unfolded from the middle to the edges; it blinked miniature red optics at Optimus and then at Clench. It was a symbiote. Bristling with sensory panels, it opened pointed mouthparts and hissed a challenge in primitive Basic.

With a snarl, Clench twisted around, and before the minicon could skitter away, he had torn it from its perch and ripped it into shreds of wire and scrap. “Soundwave,” he sneered. Another symbiote came spinning from the same direction, but Clench struck it aside and it tumbled wing over wing before scattering in pieces across the ground. It gave a last, gurgling chirp before its optics went dark.

An atonal hum answered that cry. Soundwave emerged from the blot of shadow beyond the gatelock and its lights. His visor flickered, focusing first on Optimus, then on Clench, and last on Slipshot.

From underneath Soundwave's plating swirled two multi-jointed, tensile cables with bladed ends. Optimus had never before seen such a design on a mech, rather than a non-sentient beast. One cable snaked forward like a tentacle, aiming for Slipshot's knee joint, and the seeker cried out in disgust as he darted backwards. He could not avoid the second cable, and it spiraled around his wrist and yanked him bodily to the ground before dragging him into the range of Soundwave's claws. The darkness filled with clattering metal and discordant cursing as they struggled against each other.

A precise shot landed just short of Clench's helm, and two more struck the inside of the gatelock lift. The guard screamed in a high, tinny squeal as energon sprayed from one of his shoulders. Stumbling backwards, he hit the wall of the lift and scrambled for the keypad. His fingers stumbled over the keys. The door began to close.

Clench roared and lunged. His weaponless hand curled around the edge of the door, but it closed nevertheless, and Clench snarled and jerked away from the seam with two of his fingers severed at their lowest joints. Energon sprayed for a moment before self-repair systems closed the wounds.

Two more shots sounded. One pinged into the closed door. The other might have gone through Clench's head if he had not jerked aside into the edge of a gear.

Never a fool, Clench grabbed Optimus and wrangled him in front before pointing the photon pistol at his chest. A hostage made the best shield. “Careful,” he called out into the darkness beyond the lock. “Careful where you're shooting, brother.”

Just at the reach of the light, Soundwave had subdued Slipshot into squirming struggles. The chore had occupied all of his limbs and both of his cables, however. Silence fell for a click.

Megatron emerged from the shadows, his optics burning red like so many tales of vengeful, wakened gods. His frame trembled with the strain of a long chase at high speed, and deep scratches marked the components that made up the undercarriage of his alt mode. The gun he carried was aimed at them both. He curved his mouth into a humorless smile. “You have something that is mine,” he said, and Optimus struggled to keep still. A heady combination of joy and terror surged through his frame at every pulse of his spark.

“Guess you're right,” Clench said. He dared to let go of Optimus with his other hand, and he rummaged at his back for an unpleasant moment before yanking something free and tossing it into the space between them and Megatron. Clench's hand tightened again around Optimus's neck. Whatever he had discarded clattered against the ground like a gauntlet thrown.

With fascinated horror, Optimus recognized the mangled machinery as Grategun's right arm.

Megatron seethed, his plating incandescent with rising heat, his dental plates fully bared like a mechanimal roused to fury. “I will kill you,” he said, and Optimus felt his spark shuddering with the raw threat behind those words. “I will rip you down the center seam and crush your spark in one hand.”

Trapped so close, Optimus could hear the minute shifting of gears and plates as Clench smiled. “You would, I bet.” The grip around Optimus's neck cabling tightened until the insulation tubing squeaked in protest. “But you can't. Or at least...I wouldn't recommend it, right now.” The angle of Clench's other arm twisted; the barrel of the photon pistol heated. It seared away the nanite layer at the center of Optimus's chest, and Optimus struggled to maintain his focus beneath that shallow but sharp pain. “We both want the same thing, brother,” Clench said. “In different ways, sure, but still. The same. Let me make a suggestion. You let me have what I want, right now, and then I won't have to damage what _you_ want. Not right now, anyway.”

“You always were shortsighted,” Megatron replied. He held the gun steady, despite Clench's threats and the laboring of his own cooling fans. “You've lost your way out. Where can you possibly go?”

Optimus kept still, but the sensors in his functioning arm pinged and stung, reminding him of his only advantage. Out of Clench's line of sight, he flexed his wrist and released a set of locks, and a notched blade extended along the back of his hand. The Council had not approved of giving weaponry to a Prime, but these specifications had come straight from Optimus's original protoform. He found himself grateful, more grateful than he ever could have imagined, that Alpha Trion had argued for the importance of self-defense—even for someone never intended for combat. Trion had known that Optimus would never quite match the Council's ideal of what a Prime could or should be.

“There's always somewhere to go.” Clench chuckled, but his fingers dug into the cabling of Optimus's throat and pulled. “Especially in Kaon. Especially for me. I have one of your former _loyalists_ right there, Megatron.” He narrowed his optics in amusement at Slipshot, who ventilated sharply but remained otherwise motionless under Soundwave's control. “There are others.”

With a nearly subsonic growl, Megatron took a forward step. Clench's attention focused abruptly, entirely, on his fellow gladiator, and Optimus took his chance.

He slashed his wrist upward with all the power of his frame behind the thrust. Clench roared again, but this time in pain, and the photon pistol slid across off-target from Optimus's chest. The blade was short, but it was little-used and terribly sharp. It had severed one of the sensory fins at the edge of Clench's helm. The gladiator's grip slackened; Optimus wrenched himself away. The cables at his throat caught in Clench's fingers and ripped, and Optimus cried out as he stumbled against the gatelock door.

Megatron had doubtlessly seen and exploited such rare opportunities before, and he did not hesitate. One arm slammed against the wall between Clench and Optimus. The other rammed so deeply into Clench's shoulder joint that Optimus glimpsed the shredding of the hydraulics. With a snarl, Megatron forced his hand even deeper, and Clench released a garbled wail of agony as the joint tore apart at the center. Megatron wrenched backwards with such incredible force that Clench's arm went with him—ripping away from Clench's torso, trailing sparks and curls of broken wire.

Energon pooled at Megatron's feet. Optimus tracked the path of it with his optics, watching as it smoothed itself around the clutter of Kaon's streets and chose the path of least resistance to the grated drains. The blue glitter of it had already begun to dim, and Clench made a similar groaning, guttering sound. Pressing his hand against his throat, Optimus stared at Megatron instead. He had an inexorable grip on the center of Clench's chest, and his other hand tightened around Clench's remaining forearm. With a shriek of metal and mesh, the other arm followed the first. Retribution for Grategun.

“This is not the arena.” Megatron leaned closer, and his optics narrowed as his dental plates ground against each other. “And so I need not do you the mercy of killing you outright. May you suffer, instead.” With a brutal shove, he sent Clench's broken form reeling, and the other gladiator crumpled onto the filth of the floor.

Megatron turned on the tread of his heel. All cold wrath, he loomed over Slipshot, and Soundwave unwound his limbs just enough to allow the seeker to kneel.

Without averting his gaze, Megatron picked up his discarded gun. He pressed it to the center of Slipshot's chest. Slipshot made no sound, but he offlined his optics and lowered his head.

“Wait.” Speaking was difficult, and Optimus's vocalizer made a wet and sliding sound when he tried.

For a moment, he thought the objection would make no difference, but then Megatron looked at him, judging him, willing to question his intent. Optimus stared back at him and slowly shook his head. Slipshot had followed Clench by his own will, but he had turned Clench's anger aside and likely enough saved Optimus's life.

Megatron looked back at the seeker. “Turn around.”

Frame trembling, Slipshot obeyed. Megatron tossed the gun aside, and his hands fastened on Slipshot's wings. One after the other, he yanked them out of joint, and Slipshot crumpled forward, sobbing in agony before deactivating his vocal components.

“We are finished,” Megatron said. “Find your way up to Kolkular, or crawl back to Vos, if you prefer. Do not _ever_ allow me to catch another glimpse of you.” Soundwave withdrew, and Slipshot crouched, shuddering, against the ground. At last, he worked himself into some semblance of order, and he staggered to his feet. He dared to look at Megatron, and Optimus suppressed a shiver at the collision of desperation and resignation in those violet optics. Holding himself together, wings sagging at unnatural angles, the seeker shambled off into the darkness.

Ventilating, Optimus slumped sideways against the wall. His systems surged with the unfamiliar response-charge of battle, and he bled coolant from the wound at his throat.

“Let me see,” Megatron growled. He knelt and pulled Optimus's fingers away from the cabling, hissing through bared dental plates. “You need real repair. Back at the Forge.” He glanced at Soundwave. “Call Hook.”

Optimus clutched at the projection of Megatron's shoulder armor with one hand. He tried to speak again, but only a wet sound emerged as coolant clogged his vocal components.

Frowning, Megatron worked an arm around Optimus's torso and braced one hand against the base of his back. “Can you transform?” Megatron asked, as he hauled Optimus to his feet and waited until he could stand under his own power. Even when his footing was secure, Optimus leaned forward, brushing their plating together, and Megatron made no protest. His grip tightened, instead, and his hand left wet streaks against Optimus's dorsal plating. Only then did Optimus remember to nod in reply.

Despite his answer, Megatron did not immediately release him. Optimus took the opportunity to ping his connection to Teletraan and received reassurance in response.

The moment ended when Soundwave's speaker arrays crackled with projected output. “If you've broken him that badly, bring him back here,” said an unfamiliar and waspish voice. “My equipment's not set up for travel.”

Megatron's growl vibrated against Optimus's hand, where he had pressed his palm against the center of the gladiator's chest. The other hand remained numb, the attached arm dragging like dead weight. Covering Optimus's hands with his own, Megatron curled the ends of his fingers beneath the edges of the stasis cuffs, and with a clean jerk, he separated the cuffs at the center. They fully deactivated, and Optimus vented in relief even as discomfort prickled through his awakened sensors. Megatron dismantled the left cuff, and then the right one, and both clattered to the ground to join the other trash. “Make sure you ready all that equipment, then. We are on our way.” Megatron's optics flared as he rubbed his thumbs over the scratches that marred Optimus's wrist joints. The pressure turned painful, just prior to the moment that he dropped Optimus's hands and turned to Soundwave. 

Visible waves passed over Soundwave's visor when the medic replied. “Don't damage him any more than that barbarian's already done.”

The transmission cut off with a click, and then Soundwave's systems loosed a bark of feedback that made even Megatron flinch. He turned a baleful glower on his lieutenant.

Soundwave audibly cleared his relays of static. “Apologies,” he said. His head tilted, and Optimus felt the prickling awareness of hidden optics. He had assumed that Soundwave avoided all emotional displays, but he thought he detected a certain irony behind that flat tone. “AI unit: Fully respects all instructions given. Volume, impressive.”

Teletraan responded with an inappropriately cheery ping.

“Abilities, also impressive,” Soundwave continued, and Optimus felt that blurring in the connection again as Teletraan divided its attention. The peculiar sensation increased and then sharpened as something foreign intruded into their familiar link—Soundwave, trying to reach through Teletraan and into Optimus. With an unconcerned chirp, Teletraan slammed down its firewalls, and Soundwave buzzed for a moment with an eerie, rippling chuckle. “All data channels: secure.”

Teletraan fanned its multifaceted memory core around Optimus's processors and offered the wealth of information that it had gathered from their jaunt through Kaon's underbelly and its own association with Soundwave. Doubting that they had time at the moment, Optimus gently declined.

Megatron was plainly of the same mindset. “This can wait. Transform,” he ordered.

Carefully, Optimus did so, and found that most of his pieces fit correctly. His transformation sequence, even into this altered mode, did not aggravate the injury to his neck. He felt the aching of the struts at his back and the plating of his torso, nevertheless. Only once he had proven to Megatron's satisfaction that he could roll forward and backward and turn corners, albeit slowly, did Megatron fold into his own vehicle mode. Soundwave pivoted at the waist as his frame flattened into angles. He activated nearly silent thrusters and lifted just enough to clear the worst of the debris on the streets. A true aerial mode—especially anything but a seeker frame—would attract a great deal of attention in Kaon. Better to stay close to the ground.

They limped back to the Forge. Optimus admittedly paid little attention to anything beyond the glow of Megatron's braking lights, and he made no attempt to chart their course. His struts had begun a fierce, gnawing ache that worried him despite his relief.

After entering the great hulk of the black pyramid, they had to transform to continue along the narrowing halls, and once Optimus had initiated his sequence, he knew that he would not be able to do so again without repair. He collapsed onto the floor, and only the mess of his vocal components prevented him from groaning aloud as two of his torso plates buckled. Hissing through his ventilation systems, he considered the probability of getting back to his feet unaided, and he decided the floor was comfortable enough.

Swearing, Megatron flipped back into root form and crouched beside him. Soundwave followed, tentacles extending, but Megatron bared his fangs and slapped them away. “Hold on,” he said, and then his arms closed around Optimus and lifted him.

They spent an awkward moment adjusting before Optimus managed to wrap one arm around the back of Megatron's neck. Then the position transitioned from precarious to secure, and Megatron wasted no further time on niceties—he started down the corridor with Soundwave at his heels.

Optimus's chronometer skipped. Barely moments seemed to pass before Megatron laid him on a flat surface.

“Primus above and below,” snipped the voice that had previously come across Soundwave's comm lines. Hook, then. “What a mess. He really is the Prime, after all...” Sharp, unwelcome fingers scraped along one of Optimus's temple fins, and Optimus flinched at the unfamiliarity. Megatron snarled, the fingers withdrew, and a metallic _clang_ preceded a swift, if sullen, apology.

Megatron hovered over Optimus but did not touch him. “Keep your hands to yourself.”

The banked fury in his tone invited no argument, and tension stretched the silence far beyond its breaking point before Hook made a peculiar sniffing sound and spoke. “You know I can't promise that and still repair him. Honestly, if you want to do him any good, you'll go rinse off and leave me to work. I will _behave_ myself. It is just that he is such a...rarity.”

“Restrain yourself.” Threat clear in every word, Megatron backed a step away, and while his voice did not quite gentle, it did offer a certain dark comfort when he spoke to Optimus. “I won't leave you.”

Hook took his place at Optimus's far side. “I'm putting him in low-level stasis,” he said. “This will be delicate work. I need him still.” His fingers prodded into the medical port at the side of Optimus's neck, and before Optimus could formulate any sort of protest, the world slipped sideways into darkness.

*****

The door to Megatron's personal quarters had manual locks, and Optimus watched as Megatron brought most of his strength to bear against them. Under that strain, the heavy gears eventually revolved and settled into place, and the door swung open to reveal a low-ceilinged room of only modest proportions. No windows, too little light, no reflective surfaces. Not quite the private rooms Optimus would have expected of the new leader of Kaon's underground, but the austerity suited Megatron. Only a handful of personal items decorated the largely empty space.

Megatron waved a hand, though the tension of his body belied his casual tone. “Come in.”

Weary, Optimus obeyed, and he lowered himself to sit on a chair—the only piece of furniture in the room apart from the berth itself. Megatron did not join him. He paced back and forth across the room before moving to a far corner and summoning up a containment cube. He filled it halfway with something that looked like midgrade. It smelled like midgrade, too, when he handed it to Optimus and withdrew before their fingers could touch.

“Thank you,” Optimus said, staring at him.

Hook had cleared the coolant from his vocal components and patched the cabling at his throat. The medic had likewise straightened and braced the plates at his torso, as well as bracing two or three of his spinal struts. Clench had done him damage, but nothing irreparable, and his self-repair systems could adequately compensate for the rest, given time.

Why, then, was Megatron behaving as if Clench had won?

Optimus took a long sip from the cube, and then he sighed through his vents as his systems absorbed the cool flow of the fuel. Another sip, and he set the cube aside on the floor. Megatron stood at the center of the room and radiated discomfort.

“Tell me,” Optimus said.

“I was a fool to go.” Megatron's hands fisted and his optics dimmed. He would not quite meet Optimus's gaze, and Optimus understood, abruptly, the rarity of what he was witnessing—Megatron's regret and shame. “I gave you my word. I had no intention of breaking it.”

Oddly touched, Optimus stood, and Megatron backed up a step to give him space. “I am aware of that.”

Megatron stood sullen; the cabling along his shoulders strained with tension. When Optimus moved toward him, Megatron retreated another step, and Optimus turned the reaction to his advantage by moving Megatron backwards, step by step, until Megatron's legs struck the berth and he sat on reflex. Wary, he looked up into Optimus's unguarded expression. “I am not accustomed to breaking my promises,” he said.

“No,” Optimus agreed, and he arranged himself over Megatron's lap, weight balanced on his knee joints at either side of Megatron's thighs. “I never thought you a liar.”

Frowning up at him, Megatron ran the heavy fingers of a hand up Optimus's side and over his shoulder. He caught the spar of Optimus's chin and lifted it, tilting Optimus's head, examining the patching at his throat. For a moment, Optimus allowed it, and then he twisted his head out of Megatron's grasp and leaned closer.

“I am so sorry,” Optimus said. His voice lowered into an ache. “About Grategun.”

“He was...loyal. He was a friend.”

Optimus dimmed his optics. “I had guessed.”

“You were a fool to go with Slipshot.” Megatron's voice lowered to a growl, and the incidental heat of the gears in his facial components moved like sparks along Optimus's sensory net.

If Megatron wanted to divide blame, Optimus supposed that they could share it equally. “I realize that,” he said. “I was impatient.”

“For this?” Megatron's hands framed Optimus's waist on either side. Optimus took advantage of the touch to lean even closer.

“For you. Yes.”

Their fields were not particularly similar, but the frequencies mingled in a pleasant minor key, and Optimus leaned just close enough to bring their lip components together. First kiss. Megatron could have pulled away; Optimus did not try to hold him. He had prepared himself for rejection. For a click, Megatron did tense under the contact, but then his resistance eased into something more difficult to define—a reaction too intense for surrender. His lip components parted and deepened the kiss. With a murmur of praise, Optimus used his glossa to explore Megatron's sharpened fangs.

Megatron nipped him with pressure just hard enough to sting. Optimus licked him again before withdrawing in gradual fractions, but Megatron's fingers clenched into Optimus's plating to keep him close.

“We're both fools,” Optimus said, once he could speak.

Rolling his hips, he pressed them chest to chest, and Megatron shuttered his optics and bared his dental components at the friction. His ventilations hitched and then quickened by a factor of ten, spilling hot atmosphere between their frames, and his roughened voice stroked against Optimus's auditory sensors like a physical caress. “Did you come to Kaon to seduce me?”

Optimus chuckled and static rippled under the sound. “Something like that.”

“You haven't been on Cybertron very long,” Megatron said as his optics narrowed. “Have you really had so many partners?” His hands gripped at Optimus's waist, and his thumbs stroked the interlocking plates that lined Optimus's torso.

Wondering what answer Megatron would prefer, Optimus gave him the truth with the slightest shrug. “A handful.” The Council had balked at his programming, when he had so quickly taken another mech to berth, and their examination of his base coding had resulted in a few disturbing revelations. He had sparkshared with his kind even before the disaster that had crashed their ship—long before any possible upgrading into a mature frame. Optimus had not understood _interfacing_ in the way that the Council presented it, but his fragmented memories, encoded into Teletraan, had proven that the ancient Primes had placed far fewer restrictions on intimacy than did their descendants.

New to the world—new to his time and place and purpose—Optimus had sought solace in the knowledge of others. Connection was familiar and soothing. He reached out now along his oldest communication channel, and Teletraan sent back a blip of warm acknowledgment.

Shaken to its core, the Council had argued over the new Prime's past and future development. A determined coterie of Alphas had proposed his complete reprogramming to fit him more correctly into current societal norms, and only with incredible strength of will and ruthless exploitation of debts had Alpha Trion finally triumphed: Optimus had remained unaltered despite several dire predictions about the influence of such a Prime on future public policy.

“Does that trouble you?” Optimus was honestly curious.

Megatron did not insult him by answering immediately. Instead, he gave the question a few moments of visible consideration, and then he shook his head with a slow smile. “I won't say that staking a claim holds no attraction whatsoever. But I lack the patience for virgins.”

Chuckling, Optimus pressed his hands to Megatron's chest plates, then ran his palms upward until he brushed against Megatron's gladiatorial helm. “May I?”

Megatron nodded with that smile still in place.

Optimus curled his fingers under the bottom edge and lifted away the helm, and for just a moment, before he set it aside on the berth, he marveled at its solid weight in his hands. Then the delicate crown of Megatron's temple and lateral finials unfolded around his head and redirected Optimus's attention.

Irresistibly drawn, Optimus touched his fingers to both lateral projections, fingertips kneading the upper edges before his palms slid along the front surface of each. Megatron groaned. His head tipped forward into Optimus's hands and his optics unfocused, flickered, and then shuttered. Tracing the scrollwork pattern made the gladiator's engine stall and his plating tremble. No wonder he kept these hidden during every battle. “What purpose do they serve?” Optimus asked. Kaonian mechs rarely indulged in pointless decoration.

Vents cycling, Megatron spoke through bared dental plates as Optimus continued exploring. “Atmospheric sensors. Test for...dangerous gaseous or metallic concentrations in the lowest levels. _Harder.”_

Optimus obeyed, and Megatron groped for him in response and clenched broad fingers into the gaps of cabling at Optimus's knees. Shifting, Optimus adjusted those joints and flared the armor plates around them as much as he could, inviting a deeper caress, but Megatron disappointed him by withdrawing his hands. Optimus rubbed at the base of each temple finial and felt a distinctive roughness along the seam of one—the line of an old weld. He wondered if any part of Megatron's frame had escaped damage.

“Optimus,” Megatron growled, and their optics met.

They kissed again. Friction sparked between their lip components and rippled through Optimus's sensory net in waves of feedback. When they parted, electricity crackled around them as the energy discharged.

“You are so finely put together.” Megatron slid his fingers into the workings of Optimus's hips and worked along the gyroscopic rotors that adjusted minutely for balance and stability. His thumb stroked the smooth length of a hydraulic cable, and Optimus rocked down against him in a movement that Megatron anticipated. Carried by the momentum, they collapsed backwards onto the berth, and Optimus trembled with a thrill of heady apprehension at the way Megatron had calculated and exploited his centers of greatest sensitivity—the experience of a warrior, not a lover.

“And you,” Optimus said, as he splayed his hands across the plates of Megatron's chest and stroked his fingers over the seams. Scars caught against his fingertips, and his engine purred. “Forged in fire.”

Restlessly shuddering, Megatron fisted his hands and pulled at the cabling of Optimus's hips. “Don't pretend there is _poetry_ in it.”

There was a certain poetry to Megatron himself—nothing smooth or organized by rhythm or rhyme, but something more like brutal freeverse shouted into a storm. The rougher edges let Optimus cling and catch hold of the meaning beneath each gesture, each word. “Not beauty, then,” Optimus agreed aloud, and Megatron locked his dental plates together and groaned as Optimus tugged at the center seam of the chest plates beneath his hands. “But power is attractive.”

Megatron chuckled, but the vibration failed to entirely mask the trembling of his frame as his chest plates began to part. “Yes.”

With a grinding stutter, the plates halted with scarcely a finger's breadth open between them. Megatron bared his fangs and squirmed, struggling visibly to regain control, and Optimus felt the rising buzz of frustration reflected through his energy field. Sympathy sparked deep within Optimus, and he eased closer to mouth along the edges of Megatron's plating. “Easy,” he murmured, licking at the connectors with insistent care.

Megatron's intakes hitched, and then his systems vented pure, blazing heat for a moment before his chest plates wrenched fully apart. Arousal had recessed his interior components to bring his spark chamber into prominence.

“I do nothing halfway,” Megatron noted with a curl of his lip components. Then his optics flickered and his fingers dragged upward along Optimus's dorsal plates as Optimus nudged inside the gap and applied his glossa directly to the curve of Megatron's spark casing. Electricity snapped and flared, and Optimus shivered at the burning swell of energy beneath the metal, but Megatron's casing remained firmly closed.

Optimus prodded gently along the central seam. Megatron tossed his head, scraping his finials against the bare metal of the berth, and his vocal components stripped gears over a guttering shout. Even so, he would not—or could not—open. Considering this unexpected obstacle, Optimus sat back, hovering some short distance above Megatron's chest with his thumbs brushing slow circles against the withdrawn plating. They both burned for connection. Optimus guessed the difficulty was a reluctance toward vulnerability, rather than a lack of desire for the act itself, and he would gladly risk himself in a show of desperate good faith. He wanted Megatron like he had never wanted anyone or anything else.

Parting his chest plates, Optimus halved the circle burned by Clench's photon pistol. His own spark chamber spiraled forward and irised open with an iridescent flare of blue.

Megatron stilled. His optics cycled through every basic setting and finally focused at their widest possible aperture, and the low sound he made was as much a groan as a growl. At the urgent pressure of heavy hands against his spinal struts, Optimus bent low and braced his weight against Megatron's shoulders, and then he slid his naked spark against Megatron's closed casing. Electricity jolted between them as the reaching strands of Optimus's spark tangled around the casing and stroked it gradually open. By narrowing his optical feeds, Optimus could relish the visual thrill as Megatron's spark wrapped brilliant loops around his own.

Then the merge washed through him and snared them both, and Optimus shuttered his optics and _sang_ a deep harmonic that rattled the walls.

Pushing back and forth and back again, the pleasure crested on waves of physical and emotional friction as they settled into each other, and Optimus opened himself as encouragement for Megatron to do the same. Tentatively, Optimus offered up his admiration, and Megatron swallowed the feeling like fuel before rewarding it with his own fascination. Excitement glittered through them both and wound around their sparks like dizzy bliss.

Metal scraped metal as Megatron curled sharp fingers into Optimus's shoulders, and Optimus trembled as the sensation stroked through his sensory net and settled in their joined sparks. Together, they reeled with heady awe and bewildering need.

They connected so thoroughly that Megatron melted through Optimus's barriers and sensed the uncertainty buried far beneath all the willingness. Optimus actually faltered and tried to draw his fears out of Megatron's grasp; Megatron tightened his grip by shrinking all the spaces between them down to nothing. Tangled together, they shared the certainty of Megatron's conviction and the raw force of his determination. Megatron had never lost anything that he wanted to keep. Optimus had never once regretted giving up something of himself—no matter the risk.

_Trust me,_ Megatron demanded straight from the spark, and Optimus did.

He pushed back, smoothing himself along the rough places of Megatron's consciousness—filling the gaps. Megatron bore scars internally as well as externally, and Optimus cushioned those edges and opened himself like a chalice of steel around the molten core of Kaon's greatest and most terrible creation. Burrowing deeper, Megatron filled him past capacity with a fierce hunger that registered as desire, _desire, **desire.**_

Optimus crested into overload with a sob. Mingled yearning and satisfaction brought Megatron surging against him in return.

Overhead, the lighting of the room flickered and nearly guttered at the release of potential into electric discharge. Trembling, Optimus braced himself with his wrists until all his motor functions reset and forced him into collapse against Megatron's chest. The impact separated their sparks. Optimus keened faintly in loss as the bond between them unraveled, the warmth of deep and doubled sensation fading. Megatron gasped, shuddering from head to foot, and his fingers scratched down Optimus's back in wordless protest. The conclusion of a deep merge was always bittersweet.

For long kliks, they clung to each other in silence. Optimus left his chest open, his spark exposed, and the ambient heat of the room suffused his frame as his optics struggled to focus.

At the periphery of his consciousness, Teletraan trilled into their connection. It had no physical frame of reference for interfacing, but it understood and enjoyed Optimus's pleasure.

“Your madness is contagious,” Megatron said at length, as the mingled scents of ozone and ecstasy pooled around them. “Shoving your spark at someone you barely know. Insanity.” The mild satisfaction in his voice took most of the sting from the words.

Optimus smiled. “I wanted to _know.”_ Venting softly, he slipped his fingers into the open gap of Megatron's chest, and they trembled together. “I wanted to be certain of you.”

“For what purpose?”

Choosing not to answer, Optimus shifted closer and nipped at one of Megatron's lateral finials until the gladiator's frame jolted at every careful caress. Megatron finally snarled, plainly overcome, but not yet ready to merge again despite the visible stirring of his spark.

Finally he jerked away, grasping along Optimus's shoulder and bringing them side to side. Their sparks reached and caught at the very edges, and Optimus gasped. “This is a game that two can play,” Megatron growled, as his dental plates skated along the upper edge of Optimus's left antenna fin. Jolting in Megatron's grip, Optimus vocalized in a low, harmonic moan as static snapped along the fragile plating. Optimus squirmed closer; their hands interlocked. So did their sparks.

They slipped back into each other, deep and then deeper. So recently laid, the pathways opened more easily between them, and they shared a pleasure that soothed like warmth through circuitry. Overload built slowly, but the electric bliss of it cut with unexpectedly sharp edges, and Optimus was groaning, then sobbing as Megatron held him fast and tight, chest to chest.

Afterwards, their sparks disentangled naturally as they drifted toward recharge. Megatron had questions, but he seemed reluctant to ask them, and Optimus let his own surety speak for itself.


	3. Part III

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> At long long long last, the conclusion! Please forgive me for the wait--if you can. All my thanks to Lady Oneiros, as always, for cleaning up my mess. <3 Thanks to all of you, as well, for reading!

## Part III

Megatron powered on again to a warm weight at his side and over his chest. Flinching, he lifted a fist to strike, but he subsided at the voice that spoke against the side of his helm. “Shh. Keep still,” said Optimus Prime, and Megatron surprised himself by obeying. Something soft brushed along the plating below his right optic, and he struggled to keep his faceplates from twitching. “Don't online your optics,” Optimus added. “Not yet.”

The tickling sensation continued for a full quarter-cycle before ceasing. Then it resumed below his left optic. Megatron had some idea of what Optimus might be doing, and he lapsed into restive silence with his hands fisting intermittently against the berth.

“All right.” Optimus's weight eased off of him at last. “I'm not done. But you may sit up.”

Megatron did, with a low growl that had nothing to do with aggression. His own chambers offered no mirrors for confirmation, but Optimus still held a small, precision brush in his fingers, and that brush gleamed dark red at its tip. Megatron ran through a full ventilation cycle, caught between annoyance and insistent awe. Never before had he allowed anyone else to paint him. Optimus took no notice of Megatron's internal conflict—he just dipped the brush in paint again and leaned close enough to trace the scrolling detail along Megatron's chest plates.

“I do that myself,” Megatron said at some length. Optimus had finished one side of the pattern and moved on to the other.

“Let me do for you, then. This once.”

Optimus tilted his head upward and caught Megatron with his slow smile. Megatron subsided again, but his vents activated with a vibrating shudder, and a restless heat began to pool in his fuel lines. Almost weightless, the brush glided along plating so thick that Megatron felt only the faintest suggestion of a touch, and if not for the accompanying sight of Optimus Prime leaning close in concentration, Megatron might not have trusted his sensors. Taking the opportunity to conduct his own examination, Megatron settled his focus on Optimus's face, and discovered that the last living Prime tended to catch his glossa between his dental plates when he concentrated too entirely on something. Ridiculous, but Megatron's spark quickened, nevertheless.

Optimus made a few precise strokes and pulled back, straightening. “Finished. Give that a chance to dry.”

“No.” Megatron leaned forward and caught him, made him drop the brush, made him tremble with a biting kiss. Red paint smeared across the transparent plex over Optimus's chest plates and ruined the left edge of the pattern. Optimus made a soft sound of objection, and Megatron eased back to stare at him.

Optimus cycled his vents and dimmed his optics at the mess of all his work. Then he grabbed Megatron's temple finials in gentle fingers and pulled Megatron down for another kiss.

This time, Megatron had Optimus stretched out beneath him, and the last Prime groaned and arched and dragged Megatron closer to leave shallow dents in the plating of his forearms. Dental components scraped at Megatron's clavicle supports and marked the metal. Trembling, Optimus opened his chest plates and parted the inner chamber to reveal his spark. Incredible heat blossomed and pulsed between them. Staring down into that vulnerable center, Megatron flickered his optics and faintly shook his head.

“You are so eager to show this to me.” Shifting his weight onto one arm, Megatron trailed the edge of his thumb along the rim of the chamber, and Optimus made a keening chirp in response.

Optimus tightened his grip, and his fingers skidded across the heavy armor of Megatron's spinal column. “How else should I feel?” His voice roughened as he pulled and shifted. One shimmering strand of lightning blue wound around Megatron's thumb and then crept upward around his wrist. “Open,” Optimus growled. “Open and show me.”

“Patience,” Megatron said. His lips parted just enough to show the gleam of his dental plates when he smiled. “I won't give up all my secrets at once. You would hardly do the same, after all.”

Optimus flickered his optics. “I have no secrets.”

With a low gust of vented laughter, Megatron leaned close and touched his fingertips to Optimus's antennae edges. His other hand cupped around the casing of Optimus's spark. “What fascinates me most is how utterly you seem to believe that,” he murmured. Everyone kept secrets. Everyone presented a false face to the world—even if he had yet to find the cracks in Optimus's metaphorical mask. Perhaps Optimus believed himself incapable of lying, after all.

“Let me show you,” Optimus said, and the certainty in his voice was so fierce that Megatron bared his fangs in a growl of feral joy. No lover had ever challenged him quite like this.

Megatron's chest parted with none of the humiliating struggle of their first merge. The reaching strands of brilliant blue wound fully up his arms and tangled around his spark, and the first emotion shared between them was that same primal joy—an equal found, a wish granted, a hope confirmed. Optimus cried out his name as they settled together, and Megatron covered him entirely, with protection promised by every brush of metal to metal.

The physical world slid away. Connection blurred and then burned between them instead.

As offered, Optimus opened so fully that Megatron reeled over the precipice. Hesitation gained him nothing, however, and he was not fool enough to fling himself into the unknown, so he gathered the two of them together and descended slowly through recent experience. Clench flashed around them, and Megatron bristled at the surge of honest fear that was not his own. Optimus shook free of the emotion and pulled them deeper into memory.

They surrounded each other. Here at the core, Optimus glowed with deep and lasting tranquility, and Megatron could hardly bear the embrace of so much motionless, weightless peace—nothing in his own experience resembled it, and he was caught unprepared for his own response.

Optimus untangled one bright strand of recollection from the others and offered it, freely.

 _Not quite my first memory,_ Optimus said into the narrowing spaces between them. _But the earliest one that matters, now._

Megatron took it with the care demanded by his own unexpected reverence. His spark stuttered and then assumed a different rhythm as the memory grasped him and dragged him into an unfamiliar fog of waking darkness. Sudden paralysis terrified him until the memory aligned with his sensory net and rendered movement largely foreign—a memory dimmed by megavorns. Something spoke to him in the darkness, and its voice never ceased.

Time passed unchanging. The voice murmured and instructed and sometimes it sang.

Then it paused. There was silence.

Wracked with terror, he screamed for it, and it returned to him—speaking faster now, transmitting pure data when words required too much precious time. **_//Someone else is within reach. Someone else has heard the beacon.//_** He reeled with lingering fright and unfamiliar information. If he could have grasped that voice, that connection in both hands and clung to it, he would have. **_//You need to reboot,//_** the voice said, so urgently that he tried, and tried, and tried again as errors began to scroll upwards in dim, wavering glyphs. **_//Wake up. If you can, you must wake up!//_**

He could not wake. He could not wake, and he could not understand, and he could not even move when something cut his world open and shone terrible light into his underdeveloped optics. Strangers—others—spoke then, audibly, but his audial sensors had recalibrated so thoroughly for silence that they buzzed and shrieked with feedback. All the words were nonsense but one, and that one was repeated in a tone he knew as fear and awe.

 _Primus. Primus._ A diminutive form, altered but recognizable. _Prime._

Pain swept over him in a breaking wave—the agony of incompatible code trying to combine with his own. Darkness followed, but the pain lingered, hissing and roiling, even under the dull blur of stasis lock.

Megatron struggled. He wanted to be free of this memory, and he fought it, and fought it, but then the world turned over bright again and the pain increased. A hundred digits and filaments and appendages touched him all at once, and they prodded into his protoform and invaded his ports in search of something that he could not possibly comprehend.

Everything abruptly eased, and the hundred points of unwelcome contact gradually retreated to the blurred edges of perception. In the relative quiet that followed, something _other_ slid into a single port and fanned through his code. No sharp edges, no forceful connection, just simple but deep relief. His optics onlined and finally focused on a face somehow blessedly familiar. All the angles spoke of subtlety and lasting wisdom. He focused on that face, and that touch, as systems neglected for millennia were coaxed back into functioning one by one. _Greetings, little one and ancient one,_ said a voice in words that he could comprehend. _Call me Alpha Trion._

With a lingering warmth, the memory untangled in gleaming strands, and Megatron gasped as it fully dissipated. Optimus caught him and carried them both until Megatron recovered.

 _Why?_ Megatron asked.

Optimus clung to him by all his sharpest edges. _I wanted to show you. What I have been. What frightens me._

The question of reciprocity hung between them, but Megatron shied away from sharing his own first memories of his activation in the mines. Optimus understood and did not press for it. Instead, Optimus closed around him, tugging at all the edges of him, demanding so much passion and pleasure from the very core of him that Megatron snapped and seethed and burned and _gave_ it, all of it, the fire and ferocity that both of them desired more deeply than even fuel—than even freedom.

Wound together, they climbed toward overload. Every physical touch translated as ecstasy. Optimus eased into all his gaps and angles again, becoming the necessary piece that Megatron had always lacked, and they folded into each other like interlocking armor. Each layer was stronger than the last. Reaching into the shadows where they could not connect without true bonding, Optimus brought forth an image that was not a memory, but a vision, and he gave it freely into Megatron's grasp. It spiraled outward into images concrete enough to touch, to taste: Cybertron as it had never been, a world of gleaming light untouched by environmental or governmental corruption, where a billion free mechs of every frame type reached, joyous, for a brightening future.

Megatron had dreamed that too, in all its wondrous impossibility, and the experience of it was a pleasure so intense that he writhed in its grip. He overloaded. Optimus, keening, touched him spark to spark and somehow shaped their pleasure so that they overloaded again.

When Megatron rebooted, his chest plates had closed on automatic defense protocols, but Optimus was open and trembling beneath him.

Megatron's outermost armor ticked arrhythmically as it cooled. His internals pulsed with a raw heat. Shuddering in silence, Optimus trailed grasping hands up the length of Megatron's dorsal plating, and his fingers curled gently, pointedly into the latest connections that Hook had spliced into Megatron's wiring. Megatron hissed and jerked against the touch. His newest hardware—courtesy of Swindle—glitched as it struggled to read the tactile information as wind temperature and direction.

Optimus eased his fingers away from the sensors. “You're rewiring yourself,” he murmured. “For flight.”

Tension ached through Megatron's frame. His claws pricked careful warnings into Optimus's plating. “That is hardly your concern.”

“I want to see you with wings.”

Optimus's ventilations tickled against the lateral finials of Megatron's helm. The stimulation created feedback loops. “No more prevarications,” Megatron said. The static of strained vocal components rasped along every word. “Tell me why you are here.”

Optimus sighed, and his hands smoothed downward over the planes of Megatron's back. His touch angled outward, as if searching for the sharp wings of a seeker build. “I have been working with Alpha Trion against the Council,” he began, speaking of apparent treason in so mild a tone that Megatron flickered his optics as his engine stalled. Optimus made a hitching sound as the vibration caressed his bare spark. “Ah... Not quite what you must be thinking. As Prime, I can oppose the Council directly, but the Councillors will make me regret it. Instead...we have pressured the ranking Ancients to hold an election.”

“An election?” Megatron tried—and failed—to imagine the point.

“For a Lord High Protector. No one has filled the position for megavorns. The last Prime chosen by the Council never requested an election.”

Megatron cycled his vocalizer and lifted up enough to stare down at Optimus. “Sentinel.” Sentinel Prime had not been a true Prime—not as Optimus was. Chosen by the Council of Ancients to fill the position of political figurehead, he had claimed none of the correct ancestry or the proper coding to lead Cybertron spiritually. Under his passive rule, the planet had drifted into apathy, and then into entropy. 

In every shift of his frame, in every fluctuation of his spark, Optimus was Prime. Megatron doubted he could have reacted so powerfully to anyone else. Why, then, would Optimus petition to share that power with another? In all the meager histories that Megatron had absorbed, the Lord High Protector had served as the political balance to the office of Prime.

Apprehensive, Megatron scraped his dental components together. “Why would you tell me this?”

“I want you to run. I want you to _win.”_

Megatron snarled and struggled free of Optimus's embrace. Forcing himself to his feet, he stood on legs still trembling with the aftermath of overload. “How dare you.” He could barely contain his own anger. “After all we've—after all this. How dare you mock me.” He was no politician. He ruled Kaon now, but only through the violence that Optimus had witnessed firsthand. These mechs—the refuse of Kaon and maybe, hypothetically, the unheard laborers and soldiers of Vos—had rallied and would rally to his words, but only after a demonstration of the force behind his speeches. The mechs of Iacon, Praxis and Polyhex had recognized him only as a threat. He was the savage representation of the anarchy they feared.

Rolling to one side, Optimus gave Megatron a final glimpse of blue sparklight before his chest plates slipped shut. “You know this isn't mockery.” He held Megatron's gaze with level composure as he pushed himself upright. “The election won't be announced until the Council has made every possible objection. It won't be held for half a vorn after that. You have time, beforehand, to become what you want to be.”

Still seething, Megatron bared all his dental components in a grimace. “You cannot possibly expect me to believe that you are offering this information for nothing in return.”

“I wouldn't call this nothing,” Optimus said as he stood. He touched a hand to the central seam of his chest, over that circular scar, and Megatron felt the inexplicable tug of his own spark in response. “Listen to me. The Lord High Protector presides over the military, and the Council is prevented from direct interference. But the Lord High Protector also shoulders the duty of protecting the Prime. The Council cannot interfere with his decisions in _that_ matter, either.”

Megatron pressed his dental components even more tightly together for a moment, but he let his snarl fade into a frown. With an effort, he turned his anger down a more productive path. “Without the Protector, the Council controls the military,” he said. “And the military takes the position of guardianship over you.”

“The Council would like me leashed,” Optimus confirmed. His optics blazed with focused resentment. “They are using the military to do it.”

Megatron could picture the extent of the problem, now, and he could imagine the excuses that the Council used to keep their unwieldy Prime in check. No wonder Optimus appeared so infrequently in public and spoke so rarely on his own behalf. _Security hazards,_ the officers of the military could claim, under the pressure of the Council. “You have some personal gain, then, in wanting a Lord High Protector of your own.”

“I don't want a Lord High Protector.” Optimus narrowed his optics. “I want you. I knew it from the first moment I heard you speak out on the grids. I _knew.”_

With a scowl, Megatron shook his head. “Don't be a fool. How could you possibly know? You knew nothing of me but the scraps collected by your AI and the alarmist warnings of the Council. Did you fancy yourself an expert?”

“No. That's why I came.” Optimus pressed closer, and the heat of their internal components mingled until Megatron reached for him. His claws slid into the seams of Optimus's dorsal plating as if they belonged, and Optimus gusted a wavering sigh of contentment. “Answer honestly. Would you protect me?” Reaching up, Optimus framed Megatron's face between his powerful, beautiful hands, and Megatron grasped at him convulsively and wrapped one arm around his back. “Will you protect Cybertron?”

Megatron vented. His armor flared and then contracted with frustration and an undeniable longing. The question evoked the image that Optimus had shown him—not just the vision of two sparks merged, but a promise for their world. They could reconstruct Cybertron's crumbling foundations on struts of equality. “You have too much faith.”

“You have too little,” Optimus countered, but his smile was fond.

Surrounding Optimus entirely with both arms, Megatron cradled a hand against the back of Optimus's helm and spoke against the tip of one antenna. “I can be a monster. That is what your Council will see, and what they will show to all of Cybertron.” His voice lowered into a grinding rumble over stressed components. “You've seen it yourself.” He had ripped mechs apart, and not all of them had been so deserving as Clench. Some had been fellow gladiators. Some had been idiots. Some had been unlucky.

A great many had simply stood between him and his success, and he discovered in himself the neglected but nevertheless surviving wells of his own regret.

“I've seen many things in you.” Sliding both arms around Megatron's waist, Optimus angled his head to rest the smooth plating of his cheek against the center of Megatron's chest. Abruptly aware of the hot, heavy swell of his spark, Megatron shuddered in his hold. “You aren't only the sum of your actions or your experience.”

Megatron bit gently at one antenna tip. “What am I?”

“Megatron,” Optimus said, as if the name alone were an answer. The Prime brought the full weight of his frame to bear, and though Megatron might have easily resisted, he let Optimus press him back against the wall beside the berth. Their hands roamed over each other, and Optimus kissed him before mouthing the edge of a temple finial.

Megatron gasped. “You cannot possibly control the outcome of the election.”

“No,” Optimus paused to agree. “But I am permitted to endorse one candidate above all others.” A growling undertone rippled beneath his words. “And I will.”

His mouth returned to trace the scrolling sensors. After a cycle of valiant struggling to continue the conversation, Megatron surrendered to the inevitability of sensation. His hands clenched in spasms along Optimus's spinal struts and his spark whirled faster, brighter, begging for connection until he could no longer bear to deny it. His chest plates parted. Optimus's glossa smoothed into the gap.

Soundwave pinged him, and Megatron was going to commit murder for the third time in a single rotation.

He opened the channel when Soundwave pinged twice more, relentless. _//WHAT.//_

 ** _/:My Lord.:/_** The connection vibrated with urgent apology. **_/:Chief Liaison Alpha Trion is in the Forge.:/_**

Megatron wanted to assume that he had misunderstood. _//Alpha Trion. Is **already** in the Forge?//_

**_/:Affirmative. Requested: your presence and that of Optimus Prime.:/_ **

The Forge was too massive and unwieldy a structure for good overall security, and with Clench controlling an equal portion of its interior, the maintaining and shifting of boundaries had occupied a high percentage of time, attention and energy. Clench's deactivation would change that. Megatron had already given orders to expand into the bordering passageways and arenas. If he acted quickly and decisively enough, no single mech could gain a foothold in the power vacuum left by Clench's sudden absence.

Despite the challenges, Megatron had not expected that the Chief Liaison to the Council of Ancients could wander so casually into his domain.

Optimus had stiffened in his embrace, as well, and Megatron pushed enough distance between them to see the signs of external communication in Optimus's unfocused optics. Forcing the manual override to close his chest plates, Megatron fidgeted until Optimus gave him full attention again.

“Teletraan,” Optimus muttered. The aftermath of their memory merge left Megatron with a deeper sense of understanding in regards to the AI, but he had little idea what Optimus meant. “When Clench told me what he intended to do, I asked Teletraan to inform both you and Soundwave. More than that, however...I may have begged it to tell _everyone.”_

Megatron's engine stalled. His frame filled with raw, directionless fury. “Everyone.”

Pressing both palms to Megatron's chestplates, Optimus cycled the dull atmosphere of the Forge in a low, slow sigh. “It's intensely obedient, and it maintains a shallow connection to both my physical and emotional subroutines. I may have panicked.”

“I should say you did.” Megatron dug his claws into the wall at his back to keep him from doing the same to Optimus's plating. Soundwave pinged him again. _//Acknowledged. Where?//_

 ** _/:Location: throne room.:/_** Admittedly, Megatron had avoided calling that seat a throne—he was not so insecure about his own authority—but Soundwave had no such qualms. **_/:Five cycles?:/_**

Not nearly long enough. Megatron forced back an unwelcome wave of loss. He could hardly hold Optimus Prime—no matter how willing—against the combined might of the Council and the military. The power he wielded in Kaon would not be nearly enough; they would eradicate him like a bit of bad code.

_//Acceptable.//_

Optimus pressed closer, frame to frame, as if he guessed at Megatron's disquiet. They shared the heat of thwarted arousal, and Megatron sighed through his vents as his spark slowed, cooled. “I've been blocking communications since leaving Iacon,” Optimus said with an air of confession. “I have...some sixteen hundred unacknowledged communications at present.”

Optics widening, Megatron worked to imagine the ramifications. “For less than...what? Four solar cycles out of their easy reach?”

“They may have panicked, as well,” Optimus admitted. “I took great care to cover my tracks.”

Not care enough, but the damage was done. Megatron let his head fall back against the wall with a scrape of finials and plates. He reminded himself that he could have expected no better resolution to such a marvelous disaster as this—the last living Prime in his arms, frame loose and warm, lip components parting against his own.

Megatron eventually ended the kiss to vent heat against Optimus's neck cabling. “We have to go.”

“I know.” With a keening note, Optimus dragged his fingers down Megatron's arms and bit at his central seam before pulling a step away.

Resisting the urge to kiss him again, to mark him in return, Megatron crossed the room and kept his hands busy with the manual lock. Once he had wrestled it open, Optimus stepped out into the corridor and waited until Megatron secured the door again. Megatron motioned Optimus into the lead, and he directed the Prime from passage to passage with one hand against the plates of his back. Despite Megatron's wariness, they saw no one in the halls, and a check with his chronometer revealed that the day's gladiatorial matches had already begun.

Soundwave met them at the back door to the throne room. Fully masked, he could reveal nothing, but Megatron read nervousness in the unchecked fidgeting of those long, nimble fingers.

“Open it.” Megatron stepped forward, placing Optimus behind him, letting Soundwave guard the rear. The panel slid open at Soundwave's command, and they filed through the doorway. Soundwave clicked the interior control. The door hissed shut.

Three mechs stood in the wide but low room that stretched beyond the dais. Two shone mostly in shades of red and white. The third was plainly military, with plates colored in traditional matte black. The measured movements of the one in the center made him immediately recognizable as Alpha Trion: his great age had faded the nanites of his armor, thinned his already long limbs, and given him an air of fragility. Fighting the protocols that demanded deference to a member of the highest castes, Megatron narrowed his optics and focused his attention on the dark mech at the left, instead. An unexpected thrill of apprehension traveled the length of his spinal struts, followed by a pang of awe.

All massive bulk aside, this mech was no frontline brute. Megatron knew his face and his build from the histories. Ironhide, second-tier General and Captain of the Elite Guard, stared at Optimus Prime with such intensity that Megatron felt his plating shiver and rise in response. On base programming—or perhaps something deeper—Megatron shifted his stance and placed Optimus more thoroughly behind him.

Under _his_ protection.

Ironhide's optics settled on Megatron, instead, and they stared at each other in a silence filled by the smooth rotation of weaponry. Though he stood head and shoulders above Ironhide, Megatron guessed himself measured, weighed, and found lacking. Ironhide made no visible movements, but Megatron sensed a gathering readiness that made him bare his dental components and clench his hands into fists.

“If you're responsible for that,” Ironhide finally said, tilting his head in the direction of their wayward Prime, “we're about to have a serious disagreement.”

A hand pressed against Megatron's shoulder. He flinched, but Optimus only flattened his palm and stroked along the interlocking plates until they settled again. “No,” Optimus replied. “Believe me. He rescued me from far worse.”

Megatron studied the Prime objectively for a moment. Dented, badly scraped and leaning heavily onto one foot to spare the other from his weight, Optimus still bore the marks of Clench's stasis cuffs at both wrists and the bandaging of Hook's repairs at his throat. He was dull with Kaon's poisonous soot and singed by the fire of barely legal weaponry. Most damning, red paint was still smeared across one chest plate, matched by the identical marring of Megatron's gladiatorial detailing.

He could pick out the nicks of his fangs along one of the Prime's antenna fins.

Nevertheless, Optimus stood regal, and he was all decorum and grace as he stepped off the dais to meet the Chief Liaison. Alpha Trion held out his hands, and while his bearing of passionless authority did not quite change, it _softened_ in a way that Megatron could not define when Optimus took both those hands in his own.

“Optimus,” Alpha Trion said. “What have you done?”

“Only what I knew I must.” Optimus lowered his head, plainly chastened. A moment passed, and then Alpha Trion worked his hands free and embraced Optimus fully. Plating creaked at the pressure. Megatron felt his armor lifting again, plates scraping and grinding, and he flattened it with a subtle rattle. The sound did not escape unnoticed. Ironhide scowled and cycled the barrels of his cannons.

“Teletraan screamed in a way I have never heard before and never wish to hear again.” Alpha Trion shook his head. “I feared quite truly for your life.”

Optimus eased out of the embrace and smiled, a little sadly, at his mentor. “For a moment or two...so did I.”

So had Megatron—especially when Clench had held Optimus by the neck—but he had no intention of admitting the fact. He glared at Ironhide, instead. “He came to find me,” Megatron said. “I had nothing at all to do with his running away to Kaon.”

Ironhide buzzed a snort, and his optics flickered in what looked like amusement. Megatron tightened his fists until his joints began to protest. “I'll wager you had something to do with it,” Ironhide countered. “Unwitting, maybe.” After a pointed moment of studying the tracks of paint across Optimus's chest, he flexed his arms and folded away the cannons. The palpable tension in the room decreased a level, but Megatron had no intention of letting his attention lapse. These mechs could still kill him. He doubted that Optimus's good opinion would carry any weight with the Council or the military as a whole.

Tilting his head toward Optimus—keeping his optics on Ironhide—Megatron said, “Is this one part of the Council's leash?”

Optimus chuckled, and that sound did more to soothe Megatron than did any words of reassurance. The Prime's antenna fins tipped back in a show of mild affection. “Not quite. Ironhide occasionally allows me to act according to my own common sense and conscience.”

Megatron arched an optic ridge. “That might be even worse.”

“Keeping him contained is almost more trouble than it's worth,” Ironhide said. His lip components curled up at one edge when he glanced at Megatron. “I'll imagine that you found it more difficult than expected, too. From the looks of things.” He returned the bulk of his attention to Optimus. “You're in rough shape.” In a few strides, the general circled around Optimus's back, and he reached out to touch the distorted plates that Hook had marginally restored. “Bent out of shape, even.”

“Lancet,” Alpha Trion called. 

Megatron had forgotten the last of his three unwelcome guests, but now the smallest mech stepped forward, and his medical scanners unfolded into place and focused on Optimus. After a half-cycle of scanning, the medic hissed inward through his vents before expelling a low-pitched whistle. “He shouldn't be vertical. He should be on a berth—those spinal struts are damaged! They won't support his weight!”

Optimus raised his shoulders in an experimental stretch. “Systems show my structural integrity at eighty-five percent.” He twisted carefully at the waist.

Uttering a squawk of static, Lancet flung up both hands in protest. He turned a pleading expression on Alpha Trion. “Please, Lord Trion, tell him to stop bouncing around!”

Megatron's dental plates squealed as he ground them together. “My medic is competent,” he growled. “He has pieced me back together more times than I care to count. I would hardly call his work aesthetically pleasing—not by your standards—but it will hold for as long as necessary.”

Replacing his expression of alarm with one of determined self-righteousness, Lancet met Megatron's glare with a lifted chin and a brittle tone. “This isn't a gladiator we're talking about—not some criminal or drone or laborer or even a soldier from the rank and file. This is the Lord Prime of the Cybertronian Empire, and what is _necessary_ is complete and perfect maintenance at every possible instant of functioning. Do I make myself entirely clear?”

Megatron smiled with only his fangs. “You are in danger of insulting me.”

“Peace,” Alpha Trion implored, raising a hand, and Lancet subsided into scowling. “We will allow our Prime to determine his own levels of functioning unless he proves incapable. I admit that I am relieved,” he continued, speaking to Optimus. “Ironhide planned for us to come to your rescue. Lancet imagined much worse. I am glad that you succeeded without our aid.”

Optimus smiled for Megatron. “Not entirely without rescue, however.”

Without the conscious approval of his processor, Megatron's body moved forward as if magnetically drawn, and he came back to himself only when he had already descended the dais and come within arm's reach of Optimus Prime. Lancet was making a high-pitched buzz of alarm; Ironhide had straightened to his full height. He regarded Megatron in pointed silence. Megatron refused the impulse to withdraw, but he did come fully to a halt.

Alpha Trion rested a hand against Optimus's wrist and spoke. “There is a certain urgency, however, in our return to Iacon.” Megatron employed all his experience, but he found himself unable to read the Chief Liaison past his default expression of severe serenity. “Despite all their attempts, the Council has failed to locate a viable reason to prevent or delay the election. You will be able to announce it at the next public session.”

“In three solar cycles,” Ironhide said.

“Three...” Optics widening, Optimus looked at Alpha Trion. “Will we return in time?”

“Only if we do not delay. I have thus far excused your absence as a need for solitude following the stress of the Peloxiafrin summit. Fortunately, Teletraan knew your wishes well enough to avoid screaming for help from any _other_ members of the Council.”

Optimus curved his lip components. He managed to sound apologetic but not particularly regretful. “I have caused you a great deal of trouble.”

“You are worth our trouble.”

Lancet buzzed again. “We need to go. These injuries are going to need time for complete repair. I can't have you appearing like this in front of the Council. In front of anyone.”

“That'll start a lot of questions that I don't want to answer,” Ironhide agreed. He crossed both arms over the expanse of his chest, and the sigil that detailed his rank glittered gold against the black of one shoulder. The effect should have been gaudy. Megatron had watched plenty of high-ranked military officials on the holo screens, and their adornment of mismatched medals and honors had always struck him as tawdry at best and pathetic at worst—as if they had gathered and welded on scrap as armor for their egos. Ironhide wore only his single rank, and the effect was less like advertising and more like punctuation to his long career.

If Megatron achieved election as Lord High Protector, he would outrank this mech. The idea struck him as ridiculous. Obscene.

Intriguing.

“Can you be ready, Optimus?” Alpha Trion asked. His hand remained on Optimus's wrist, and his thumb rubbed gently, perhaps unconsciously, over the marks there.

Optimus's vents cycled in an audible sigh. “I suppose I have no choice. This is what we've worked toward.” Pulling out of Alpha Trion's grasp, he turned to Megatron, and in a moment he had closed the distance between them.

Optimus lifted up and urged Megatron's head down; he touched their foreheads together. His fingers aligned along the bases of Megatron's lateral finials. Only at that moment did Megatron realize that he had forgotten to collect his helmet before leaving his room. Too late, now. They kissed, and instead of wincing with embarrassment, Megatron swelled with a particularly fierce sense of triumph at the way Optimus clung tight and vented hot. A small but vicious thread of his spark hoped that all of them would look—would see and recognize the gravity between the two of them.

“I'd hoped for more time,” Optimus said when they parted. The suggestions of gold in the blue of his optics gleamed and shifted, aligning like stars.

Megatron lowered his voice and spoke through gritted dental components. “I'm glad you came at all.”

Wordless, Optimus nodded. He lowered his arms, but the fingers of one hand wrapped around Megatron's forearm, and he extended a single, subtle cable. Megatron hesitated. Experience and suspicion battled with curiosity and trust. After a moment, he wrapped his fingers around Optimus's elbow joint in return, and one of his ports irised open. They connected with a simultaneous shiver. Through the cable, they shared a form of branched and complicated contact. Its depth rendered Megatron increasingly uncomfortable, and Optimus relented, resolved the connection into a wash of tingling sensory pleasure, and pushed through a multilayered channel code.

Megatron hesitated again, but he integrated it. _//Your frequency?//_

 _::Through Teletraan.::_ Optimus trembled in Megatron's grip. _::We must take care, but...I'm not quite willing to go entirely without you for the next half a vorn.::_

Megatron gave him a slow smile despite their shared discontentment. _//I hope you don't imagine I would object.//_

As if pulled, Optimus leaned toward him again with optics sparking blue.

“Optimus,” Alpha Trion said, mild but insistent.

Guilty, Optimus jerked back, and Megatron clamped down on his disappointment and rendered it into impatience. “You cannot have come so far, so quickly, without better transportation,” he said to Ironhide. Alpha Trion, in particular, looked as if he possessed no useful alt mode. “Where are you docked?” The Forge itself held a handful of launching pads, all of them disused, but the Elite of Cybertron did attend gladiatorial matches, and they required a discreet space to store their shuttles.

“Here,” Ironhide confirmed. “Not far.”

“Far enough,” Lancet sniffed, and he performed a brief transformation into a medical vehicle with a capable carrying bed. “Climb on,” he said. “I won't hear any more objections.” Somewhat gingerly, and with a rather suffering expression, Optimus took a seat on the bed and pulled up his legs to keep his feet from dragging. Lancet's suspension sagged noticeably under the weight, but he made no protests—unlike Hook might have done in a similar situation.

No doubt Soundwave had aided their guests into this throne room. He stepped forward now to guide them out again. The order of their procession into the passages placed him on point, with Optimus, Lancet, and Alpha Trion protected in the center. Megatron intended to take his place at the back; Ironhide plainly intended to do the same. They spent an awkward moment staring each other down, Megatron scowling and his armor shifting, until Ironhide gave ground with so sardonic a smile that Megatron only bristled further at the condescension. He took his preferred position, nevertheless, and they encountered no overt threats on the short journey from the throne room to the upper levels.

The shuttle on the lowest landing pad was small and in such bad repair that Megatron arched both optic ridges at the sight of it. He supposed he should praise Alpha Trion's dedication to subterfuge, but he wondered if the thing would launch again now that it had landed.

With a squeak of gears, Lancet rolled to a halt. Optimus stood, and Megatron and Ironhide moved simultaneously to support him on either side. Optimus glanced from one to the other, plainly amused, but he accepted their help with good grace, and even Lancet seemed satisfied enough when he resumed his root form. The shuttle opened according to some voiceless command from Alpha Trion; a loading platform descended and molded itself to the uneven exterior surface of the Forge.

“Please,” said Alpha Trion. He gestured to the shuttle with a delicate hand.

Optimus drew out of their combined grip with diplomatic ease. “I am capable.” His fingers cupped Megatron's jaw for a lingering moment, tracing the base of one finial with only the tips, and just as swiftly he was out of reach, stepping up onto the platform with Alpha Trion just behind him. “Megatron,” he murmured, with his optics alight. Megatron took a forward step, but Optimus said nothing else, and the platform eased upward into the shuttle, locked for a cycle or so, and then descended again, empty.

Lancet stepped onto it and stood scowling at Megatron and, by association, at Ironhide, who paid him no attention.

Instead, the general grinned in a startling display of polished dental plates. “Hope you'll be worth a little more if we meet again.”

“Count on it.” Megatron showed the tips of his fangs in return.

Ironhide chuckled. Then he stepped onto the platform as well, and with a whirr of engaging hydraulics, it lifted him out of sight. The shuttle sealed itself around the seams, expelling atmosphere in hissing clouds from exterior vents, and Megatron realized with an interior jolt that it must be at least semi-sentient. That weathered exterior must require a complicated chameleon technology. No doubt the Prime considered such luxuries commonplace. Yet Optimus had come here, to Kaon, the acid pit of the planet, and he had never balked at even the worst that this city had offered him in reward. Pride sliced through Megatron in a slow and stinging wave. It almost eased the longing that ached outward from his spark.

The shuttle lifted off the pad, and its launch thrusters stirred the fine surface layer of soot. Thin strips of metal extended from its sides and overlapped into sturdy wings with exceptionally flexible segments. When the primary thrusters engaged, the shuttle rose into the sky on a smooth arc, and it ascended until its trailing winglights dissolved into the dark crimson of the horizon.

Soundwave took his place at Megatron's side, and he was silent. He offered no comfort, but he made no comment on Megatron's obvious weakness, either, and that was reassurance enough.

“We must finish the task of subduing the Forge,” Megatron said.

After a moment, light flashed across Soundwave's visor, and a compacted file appeared in Megatron's communication queue. He accepted it. The data unfolded into a detailed map with all the worming passageways and chambers of the Forge outlined in blue; a translucent purple filled seventy-two percent of the mapped area. As Megatron watched, the percentage rose from seventy-two to seventy-three.

“Your will,” Soundwave said. “Shall be done.”

Megatron minimized the file and let it run in the background of his primary processes. “We have a great deal more to do.” His hands fisted swiftly enough that his fingers struck sparks against his palms. “I've seen what is possible. I intend to do even better.”

Soundwave lowered his head in obedience.

*****

Optimus joined Alpha Trion in front of the command console and tried not to stare through the viewport as the low structures of Kaon descended out of sight.

“As quickly as possible, SkyLynx,” Alpha Trion murmured. He rested a hand below the navigation controls.

“As if anything less would be acceptable to my standards, Lord Trion.”

Optimus expected some sort of lecture to follow, delivered in the shuttle's prim tones, but SkyLynx lapsed into uncharacteristic silence. No doubt he would learn more by eavesdropping, because Alpha Trion swiftly filled the void. “An unexpected choice, Optimus. But an intriguing one.” His optics rested on Ironhide, whose lip components twitched.

“Asking my opinion?”

“I find myself unexpectedly desiring it,” Alpha Trion drawled in reply.

Ironhide actually paused for a moment of true reflection, and at length, he lifted both shoulders in a shrug. “There's promise, there. Some rough potential, anyway.” Crossing both arms over his chest plates, he cycled his cannons with a subtle hum. “Can't say I trust him. But. I _want_ to.”

Optimus kept as silent as SkyLynx and tried to quiet the hope surging in his spark.

“His reactions were something singular,” said Alpha Trion, with the slightest tilt of his head. “So much implicit protectiveness.” His head tilted another degree. He seemed to be listening to something just below the auditory level, and his lips almost curved. “The mark of the latent Lord High Protector?”

Ironhide's optics widened a bit. “You think he's got proper coding? Without downloads?”

Alpha Trion stared straight ahead, but his optics dimmed and took on a strange tint. “He is not so young a mech as to make the notion impossible. As I recall, those mass frame manufacturers were notorious for their scrounging of old and outdated coding.”

Ironhide grunted his agreement. “Plenty of those heavy builds deactivated from defects.”

“As many as deactivated from injury or overwork. Such lives are terribly short.”

“Megatron is something unique,” Optimus said. He kept his tone neutral, but Ironhide arched his optic ridges in equal parts exasperation and amusement, and Alpha Trion laid his hand against Optimus's upper arm. “He is so much more than the sum of all his parts.” Enclosed in Megatron's arms, Optimus had recognized at once the unspeakable solidarity of a complementary partner. He could have overloaded on the satisfaction of that realization alone; he could have fallen to his knees in ecstasy without a single physical touch.

Ironhide shook his head with a snort. “What's going on in your processor, Prime? You can't influence the election. That's the _point._ I kind of doubt that you'll be engaging in anything past the line of legality, either.”

“I won't need any influence beyond what I may properly and openly give. The mechs of Kaon have already given their support to Megatron. The rest of Cybertron will see what they—and I—have seen in him. Given the proper chance.”

Lancet's objection sputtered through his vocalizer. “That isn't—the Senate would never allow a creature such as Megatron to—to be—!”

“The Senate won't have a choice,” Ironhide said in grudging respect.

“You've asked for very little from us, Optimus,” Alpha Trion murmured, interrupting them. “Despite all that Cybertron and its inhabitants have demanded of you. We would be cruel indeed to deny you the deepest desire of your spark.”

Humbled, Optimus shuttered his optics, and his fingers covered Alpha Trion's hand. “I think that I've seen something extraordinary,” he said, reaching for the words to explain the vision he had shared while wrapped in Megatron's spark. “If I do have such a desire—for Cybertron, as well as for myself—then this is it. A dream that will become the future.” Since his presentation in Iacon, Optimus had learned any number of lessons, but none had discouraged him so badly as the discovery that he could make no meaningful changes by himself. He lacked not just force, but the experience to implement it. “Cybertron needs what Megatron can give it.”

Alpha Trion squeezed at Optimus's upper arm before releasing it. “Then I will trust in your dream.”

“I think I would describe it as a recharge flux, thank you. And I have several code patches that will thoroughly eliminate such things.” Lancet frowned and fidgeted with the controls in front of him until SkyLynx locked the console in irritation.

“I think we'll have our work cut out for us,” Ironhide grumped, but he leaned back against the interior curve of the command deck and settled himself for their journey. “As much before the election as afterward. Even if things go the way you want.”

They were passing now over the Wastes, and Optimus remembered how the grit of those surfaces had sifted into his every seam—how the broken edges of metal had found the chinks in his altmode armor and jabbed at his interior. Even the anticipation of Kaon, and Kaon's champion gladiator, had not lessened Optimus's hatred of that particular stretch of the planet, but he could not regret the trip. “You've always told me that anything worthwhile is worth the work,” he said, and caught Ironhide's narrow smile in response. Far in the distance, the lights of Praxus glinted on the horizon line. The glow of those lean, winged structures would eventually lead into the brilliant discs of Polyhex, then the flat expanses of the Tyger Pax docks, and finally the blazing, busy spires of Iacon. Large as Cybertron was, it seemed suddenly intimate. In all directions, the cities connected. Beyond the planet's surface, all the colonies and holdings of the Cybertronian empire stretched out in great, interlocking webs of light and static and sound. With one touch in the right way, all those connections would ring true, and every individual would sing in a harmonic note.

Optimus smiled, and he shuttered his optics to remember how Megatron's hand had felt, cupped so carefully around the chamber of his spark.

_~End~_


End file.
